As
seen in: Restaurants, Detroit Free Press, November 12,
2004
RESTAURANTS
Waterford storefront is all about the ribs
By
Cassandra Spratling, Free Press Staff Writer
If
ever you need evidence that restaurants don't have to
be fancy to be good, Rib Rack Ribs and Chicken is it.
It's
a small storefront restaurant in a typical suburban shopping
strip, next door to a Murray's Discount Auto Supplies
Store.
Inside
is an airy, open space with seven shiny picnic tables
and seating for a few more folks on benches at a counter
facing the parking lot.
Framed
historical photos from the local community and jerseys
from area high schools adorn the cocoa-brown walls: Clarkston,
Waterford Mott, Kettering and Our Lady of the Lakes. They
add a familiar, small town feeling to the comfortable,
casual place.
After
you order your food at the counter from the waitstaff,
they'll either bring your food to your table or call you
up to pick up your tray. The process can be disappointing
if you're accustomed to sitting and being served.
But
the disappointment lasts only as long as the first bite
into their specialty: succulent fall-off-the-bones-tender
ribs seasoned with a sweet barbecue sauce that quickly
became so popular they started bottling it and selling
it for $4.95 a bottle.
THE
BABY BACK PORK RIBS can be ordered alone or in
a variety of combinations, including a full slab of about
12 to 14 bones for $17.95, a dinner for $12.95 or a snack
for $7.95.
The
restaurant, which opened in May, got its start on the
front porch of a Central Michigan University fraternity
house in the early 1990s. That's when owners Mike Owens
and Mark Tomas lived with their brothers of Sigma Phi
Epsilon. Somehow, the cooking duties fell to them.
They
discovered they enjoyed it, and the brothers and others
enjoyed their cooking, especially the ribs they'd fire
up on the grill on the front porch. They hadn't planned
to open a restaruant. Tomas got a degreee in finance and
Owens earned a degree in broadcast and advertising.
"I
was like a lot of kids, not sure what I really wanted
to do," says Owens, who manages the restaurant and
cooks.
After
a few years working in other restaurants, he decided to
open his own place with Tomas, relying heavily on the
barbecue that had attracted people to the fraternity's
front porch.
They
developed the recipe for the ribs and the sauce through
trial and error. "It's a process really with the
ribs," Owens says. "We season the ribs, bake
them and then we grill them."
The
sauce begins with tomtato puree, then gets various spices
including garlic powder, corn syrup, brown suger, salt
and vinegar. The result is a sweet, sticky sauce that
is finger-licking good.
But
you need not stop at the ribs.
THE
BROASTED CHICKEN is just as tasty; well-seasoned,
crispy and golden brown. The chicken can be ordered by
the eight-piece bucket for $12.95 or the 24-piece barrel
for $28.99 and various combinations in between.
The
restaurant offers a short but pleasing selection of side
dishes that can be ordered with various dinner combinations
or alone. Their special rack potatoes, diced Idaho potatoes
($1.25 for a small side), were a particular hit. They're
hand-cut, broasted, then brushed with a delicious butter
sauce. The creamy cole slaw was also quite tasty.
The
mac n' cheese is a favorite among customers, Owens says.
But unlike the wonderful potatoes, it's not house-made.
Though it had a good cheesy taste, the texture was milkier
than I prefer.
The
fish dishes sampled were a vast disappointment. Both the
perch and the cod reminded me of fish sticks, breaded
frozen fish dipped in a frying pan without any imagination.
Owens
says they wanted the kind of family restaurant where people
could go to dine in or carry out good food without having
to put on a shirt and tie.
He
and his partner seem to have provided this community with
just that kind of place.
Contact
CASSANDRA SPRATLING at 313-223-4580 or spratling@freepress.com.
Back
