Barbecue in Tulsa

Red Fork Hippie Chick here, typing with greasy fingers, in between sips of sweet tea and bites of buttermilk pie …

Wilson's BBQ ("U Need No Teeth to Eat Our Beef") is a North Tulsa institution. Ron and I ventured up to its Apache Street location in search of properly cooked pig shortly after we moved here, and we were not disappointed.

We hadn't been there in a while. Apache isn't close to Red Fork, and it isn't close to either of our offices, and it isn't close to Route 66, and usually when we go to the north side of town to eat, we end up stuffing ourselves with big bowls of White River Fish Market's to-die-for red beans and rice … so we haven't really made it back to Wilson's lately.

But God bless 'em, Wilson's has come to us. Or to our road, at least. This week, the owner opened up a second location in an old KFC on 11th Street — a.k.a. Route 66 — that most recently served as home to a short-lived and rather uninspiring Del Rancho franchise.

Here are all the reasons you need to stop at Wilson's on your way through town:

1. Ribs. I'm not talking about those little playlike ribs they steal off some underfed runt-of-the-litter piglet and douse in some flavorless ketchup-based barbecue sauce at those yuppie sports bars. I'm talking about RIBS — big, hefty, greasy, smoky, meaty ribs, with your choice of sweet or spicy sauce for dipping. Dip if you must, but don't drown. Too much sauce is just gilding the lily, if you ask me … though I might feel differently if they ever decided to explore the possiblities of a Carolina-style sauce.

2. Side dishes. If you ask me, sweet potato fries are indisputable proof of the existence of a kind and benevolent God. And Wilson's has 'em on the menu, along with the usual beans and slaw and potato salad.

3. Buttermilk pie. Sweet, wonderful, brown-on-the-edges, golden-in-the-middle buttermilk pie like you'd find in somebody's mama's kitchen. Yow. Za. The sweet potato pie isn't bad, either.

4. Good service. The folks at Wilson's are very friendly — and proud as punch of their business and their product. I wandered off to get something out of my car while I was waiting for my food this evening. When I got back, the woman who waited on me grinned. "Hang on a second," she said. "I gotta show off these ribs here." She opened my to-go box and showed the contents to a customer who was trying to decide what to order. She just beamed when she saw the look of unbridled joy on my face as I realized what I'd just bought.

5. As far as I'm concerned, the dividing line between a good restaurant and a truly magnificent restaurant lies in whether or not they know the correct answer to the question, "Y'all got sweet tea?" The correct answer is "Yes." Not "No, I'm sorry, we don't," or "We've got raspberry tea" (which is nice to drink but bears no resemblance to sweet tea), or — God forbid — "We've got sweetener on the table." The only correct answer is "Yes." And Wilson's has the correct answer. And they do it right — brewed from scratch and sweetened while it's hot so it dissolves the sugar.

There are a million reasons to spend a few days exploring Tulsa's stretch of Route 66. Add Wilson's to the list. It's definitely worth a stop.

— Red Fork Hippie Chick