Loving My Inner Fat Kid: "Cue With A Side of Cupcakes

Meat is good. Let me just lead off with that statement. Which is mildly ironic being that I just posted a review of a vegan joint I went to last month. But Mighty Quinn's is much more in my wheelhouse. A no-nonsense BBQ joint in the East Village where they serve mass quantities of charred, tasty flesh. There aren't much better ways to spend a sunny Saturday afternoon than drinking beer and eating slow-cooked meat and that's exactly what Annie, Fyfe-Dawg and myself did a couple of weeks ago. (I know, I know...I've been slow in getting to these things. I promise to try and do better in the future.)

Mighty Quinn's is small, at least small in contrast to how many people want to get in there at the same time...it's seemingly very popular. I can't even imagine how packed it must be during dinner time. As it was there were no tables available for us. We wound up eating at the window counter, which is kinda cool actually. It's a lil cramped in here...but so what. We had meat and beer.

You can get food as a single serving kind of deal or by weight. You can guess what we did. We got ourselves a pound of brisket, a half-pound of pulled pork, a rack of ribs and this mashed sweet potato stuff. We took quite a lot of this stuff home. At Mighty Quinn's they don't fuck around with portion sizes. Mighty's also has a pretty decent selection of beer to go along with their delectables. Annie and I went with Allagash White...always a good choice as far as I'm concerned. Fyfe was driving...no beer for him.

Just look at that sexy smoke ring.

The brisket is smoky and good. Just enough fat in it to be flavorful. But at no point does it taste “fatty”. Not the best brisket I've had but excellent nonetheless. The pulled pork was exceptional too. Both came with really good slaw. In my mind, outside of having good cue, good slaw makes a BBQ joint. What cuts through the richness and heaviness of all that protein better than a really good cole slaw? The answer to that question is nothing. You can both of these things as sandwiches but why bother with bread with all this wonderful protein to ingest. The sweet potato mash thing was so damn good. With candied pecans and maple syrup in it.

Imagine the size of the pig.

The ribs. Now here is where Mighty Quinn's really shines. These GIANT hunks of slain mega-oinkers are marvelous. They look like the beasts that Fred puts on the side of his car in the opening of The Flintstones. They're literally heavy in your hand. Tender and spicy and all sorts of goodness. This is what ribs are supposed to look and taste like.

The only problem I had with anything I ate here was that it all tends to lean towards salty. After your food is cut up right in front of you they sprinkle some salt on it as it moves through the line. If you can, ask the cutter to spare that last dousing of salt. It'll make all the difference. Just a little less salt and this would've been the perfect outing.

Now that I've finally written this up, I'm drooling on myself a little bit. I need to get back here soon. I want more ribs...and maybe the hot link I didn't get to try last time.

Since we got to all the protein, allow me this indulgence. Prior to getting to Mighty Quinn's, Fyfe insisted we stop at Molly's Cupcakes. What a worthy prelude. The nutella/peanut butter and the peach cobbler cupcakes were like tiny, little paper-wrapped 4-bite pieces of happiness.