Sweet and Sour in Boston

Rewind a few weeks ago to San Francisco. Since I'm lazy and I don't update as much as JP, or ever really, I didn't write about my love for The Alembic. I found it on Yelp and Suzy and Co both said it was a great bar. Suzy's friend dropped us off so JP and I could put in our name. Now here's the best part...the hostess said "What's your phone number? We'll text you when your table is ready". What? Seriously? We don't have to wait around and try to stay out of the way? This bar is too cool for the buzzers, and plus you can't go very far. So, to me, this is the greatest idea ever. I can wander around Haight as far as I want because you'll text me when you're ready. Awesome. We ended up going back and finding 5 seats at the bar, but the texting is still a great idea. I highly recommend this bar. I had two of the best drinks I've ever consumed. See JP's review for pictures and descriptions.

OK back to the present. Yesterday was the first nice day of the year. JP and I were trying to figure out where to go to enjoy the weather so we settled on Freeport, Maine. They have outlets, it would be a nice drive, and JP had never been. Before we went we did what we always do, we looked up the area restaurants. One, Buck's Naked BBQ, came highly rated; it received 4 stars on Yelp. Never one to turn down barbecue, we decided this would be our lunch destination. 2 hours later we arrive at Buck's. I'm excited. I love pulled pork. JP tells me it's naked because it comes out bare, no sauce whatsoever. We walk in and they ask us if we want to sit at the table right by the door. We pass and decide we'd like to sit in the bar area. We're seated and I order a diet Coke. They only have Pepsi. Strike one.
We look over our menu and I decide on the pulled pork. I then get to choose two sides. Since I've given up fried food for Lent, I decided on the potato salad. I couldn't decide if I wanted the coleslaw or the corn bread. BTW, what BBQ place doesn't automatically provide corn bread? I thought it normally came with every order. It came with JP's meal, but I thought most joints will serve it with every order. I also decide to order a cup of the gumbo. It has pulled chicken, sausage, & crayfish. The waiter comes back and I order, but ask him what's better, the coleslaw or the cornbread. He looks at me like I have two heads and then makes a motion like flipping a coin and shrugs his shoulders. OK? So you, who works here, and, presumably, eats the food, can't tell me what is better? Maybe I was wrong to assume he eats the food. I can't say I would eat it if I worked there.
Gumbo comes. I remove the crayfish and give it to JP. He's been craving it for a while so I figured I'd share. My first bite is good. I tell JP if this is any indication we're in for some good food. Then I continue to eat. The pulled chicken is very tasty, but that's it. I keep eating and it's actually becoming more bland. How is that even possible?? I actually have to add salt and pepper, which is very rare for me.
Ding! Food is done. I can see them put up two dishes. And I can see them sit there. And sit there. Oh and sit there some more. The dishes were up there for about 3-4 minutes while numerous employees walked past. Strike two.
Food is eventually brought over. We test out the different sauces. JP likes the skinny sauce and I like mustard/vinegar based sauce.
So here's the thing, their whole restaurant is based off of being naked. So when your BBQ is naked, the bare meat should speak for itself. Buck's doesn't. Some bites of the pork were dry, others were juicy, but there was no flavor. It was bland. I found myself looking for flavor and having to add copious amounts of the provided sauce. I tried the potato salad. It too was bland, yet covered in mayonnaise. So I guess even the mayo was bland. OK so what's left? The corn bread. More like corn dead? Seriously. It wasn't good. It was dry. Again, I found myself wanting to add something. Everything they served made me want to add something. Their naked just wasn't good enough.
Eventually we paid and left. On our way out, the hostess didn't thank us for coming. Strike three.

The one plus was they give you huge portions at a good price. But do you really want a huge portion of not really great food? Yeah that's what I thought.

I give Buck's Naked BBQ, 1 out of 5.

We decided to take a quick road trip to Freeport, ME to walk around their outlet shops and enjoy the nice weather. Searching for places to eat lunch online before heading out, I saw Buck's Naked BBQ and after looking at the website and menu, I knew that was where we were going to have lunch. Needless to say, we had very high expectations for Buck's. Sadly, those expectations weren't met.



Buck's Naked BBQ is aptly named because the BBQ comes out naked. Meaning with no sauce. Basically, the slow cooked meat should speak for itself. This, in theory, is usually the best practice for any type of cooking. However, Buck's does provide 4 types of BBQ sauces for you to add as much or as little as you like. The sauces are all at the table, which is nice. The last place we had BBQ only gave us a small portion of sauce on the side of our BBQ and charged us if we wanted extra. So that was a definitely a plus at Buck's.



Abby started with the gumbo. I enjoyed the crawfish that came with the soup, but the one spoonful I had was somewhat bland. Abby enjoyed the pulled chicken that was in the gumbo and even remarked that this was a good sign that the rest of the BBQ that we ordered would be really good.




As we were waiting for our main entree (I went with the smokehouse sampler, which consisted of babyback ribs, beef ribs, and chicken wings, and Abby went with the pulled pork sandwich) we heard the ding from the kitchen bell that indicates to waiters and servers that food was ready to pickup. Abby noticed that the food sitting under the heatlamps appeared to be our lunch. It sat there. Servers walked past the kitchen not even caring. It continued to sit there. One of the managers, or maybe the owners' son, was sitting at the bar with legs up over multiple seats not really caring about anything other than his laptop. Our food continued to "die" under the heat lamps. Finally, after several minutes someone noticed our food and brought it over to our table.




My ribs were big and covered in the dry rub that was used over the meat. Neither babyback ribs or beef ribs were "fall off the bone" tender, but weren't completely dry either. Each bite though was so overpowered by the dry rub, it was hard to really get the flavor of the ribs. I thought that was the whole point of the naked BBQ. I did add some sauce though, choosing the WNC Skinny Dip. This was my favorite sauce of the 4 and I thought was a pretty solid BBQ sauce. The babybacks were the better of the ribs, as it should since they are listed as "award-winning". While the ribs were naked, the chicken wings most definitely weren't. I had the wings in Jerk sauce, and they came slathered. I had to scrape the sauce off the wings before I ate them. That being said, the wings were cooked perfectly and were very juicy. The jerk sauce, once I took the majority off, was better than average, but still nothing to write home about. Abby's pulled pork was like my BBQ, slightly dry and needing sauce. The sides weren't bad, but weren't great either. I didn't like the cornbread much, but did like the baked beans.

Bottom line: Buck's Naked BBQ isn't the greatest BBQ I've ever had. It's not even on the list of best BBQ in New England. Not sure if we went on a bad day or not (the couple sitting behind us didn't seem to be enjoying their lunch either) but there wasn't anything worth coming back to. I give Buck's Naked BBQ a 1 and 1/2 out of 5. (Probably closer to a 2 than a 1 since the portions were pretty big and the sauces weren't bad either.)