Big Easy Bar B Q & Crabshack
332 Kings Road Chelsea
The front of the restaurant looked very promising with a TV on the front wall flipping through images of their food alongside the menu, the menu is a varied mix including a lot of fish, Mexican and of course BBQ. They smoke the food on an “Old Hickory Pit” finishing it off on the grill, why? I have no idea.
This is the type of restaurant that requires a group to really test the menu but we went there with the intention of checking out the BBQ so we ordered a Babyback Ribs, Chicken and Shrimp combo with a side of chicken wings (we were sharing!!)
The chicken wings were the standard deep fried with a Louisiana hot sauce, basic but good, I have been to plenty of places that have managed to trash chicken wings.
The main was interesting, If you were to try Big Easy I would suggest asking for the BBQ sauce on the side, as you will see the chicken and ribs were smothered and floating in it. The Ribs looked promising, charred on the edges giving the impression of meaty ribs that had indeed been cooked on the smoker. Unfortunately I was proved very wrong. The ribs were not meaty but overcooked and just plain burnt. I do not understand why they would finish the ribs off on a grill after smoking them?
The Chicken had a pretty good texture and hadn’t dried out but even after scrapping off the majority of the BBQ sauce, you could not taste the chicken or smoke. A real shame. Unfortunately the shrimp were charred a little too much and had dried out with over cooking.
A real shame, Big Easy has potential, it has a decent smoker, I just think their methods need a little work. Although the BBQ experience was pretty poor I would still recommend the restaurant if you were in the Chelsea area with a group of friends, I would like to give the fish a go next time.
Toby