Meat, meat and meat - Eating at the Hill Country Barbecue, New York

Moving from the sublime (and the Gramercy Tavern was really sublime) to the ridiculous, well almost, interesting anyway.

View Larger Map

Tonight saw us walking down Madison, it is not as scary as in Kirstey McCaul's song indeed it was a really nice walk. We got to Madison Square Park and two blocks further on came to Hill Country New York. When looking at places to eat in New York I'd followed a few blogs this one
suggested how good Hill Country was, so I visited their website and liked the idea of grossing out on huge amounts of meat - though properly barbecued meat.

The place was very welcoming and calls itself a Barbecue Market, and it soon becomes apparent why. It is worth reading the 'How it Works' section of their website. This points you to the distinctive Menu outlined below:

So I was expecting to select some good portions of meat and some balanced sides. However today being Monday meant it was Hill Country's 'All you can eat' day. Which meant that for $25 you could have as much Brisket, Pork Ribs and Chicken as you wanted, and as many sides, starting with two each.

The first platter came with four slices of Brisket and two of each of the Ribs and Chicken as sides I opted for Green Bean Casserole and a bowl of Texas Red (Chilli) - there was a $2 supplement for this. Drew had ordered confetti cole slaw and cool as a cucumber salad.
Of course I'd not taken into account that Drew was with me, so in practice he had two slices of Brisket and I had the other two plus the ribs and chicken. We shared the sides.

While the picture might look a little intimidating (and apologies to my vegetarian relatives) the flavours were lovely. In particular the Brisket was cooked so that it was soft and tender with a hint of the smokiness that comes from the process of cooking it over wood. There is no doubt that this place knows how to cook its meat to perfection. The Chicken was plump and soft, yet also had that delicate barbecue flavour. The ribs were delicious, these weren't that British favourite spare ribs but had plenty of meat on them, as tasty as the other meats.

So we eat all that we had, of course, this meant that round 2 (this was our waiters term not ours) was about to begin. This included the same meats, Drew stayed with the two same sides - he loved both of them, so much that I saw little of the cole slaw. I opted for smoky chipolte devilled eggs and black-eyed beans which were both tasty. As you can see there was even more meat in round two, enough to beat us. But when you realise how much meat I eat you will wonder if I may not expire with meat overdose before tomorrow. Drew had said earlier in the day on Facebook that I would be eating meat and he would be observing, well it turned out right.
Overview - this place is well worth a try, the meat is better than any barbecued meat I have ever tasted - tip: don't eat as much meat as I did. I heard the BBC reporting a few weeks ago about evidence that Neanderthal man was dying of excess meat in their diet, I wouldn't be surprised if it happened to someone who eat as much as I did. Still I managed to walk back to the hotel, but I reckon my digestion is going to be working overtime tonight.