During the Route 66 Festival, I was hoping to find a great restaurant that I hadn't visited before in my half-dozen excursions or so through Albuquerque.
The Frontier was pretty swell, with its unique atmosphere and combination of health food and stick-to-your-ribs diner fare. But the real find for Emily and me was Powdrell's BBQ at 11309 Central Ave. NE. It was yet another example of Jane and Michael Stern steering us right.
Emily says that one of the signs of a good restaurant is if it gives the right answer to the question: "Y'all got sweet tea?" The answer should not be "We have sugar you can put in your tea" or "We have raspberry tea." The correct answer is, "Yes, ma'am, we have sweet tea." This is the stuff in which sugar is added while the tea is still hot so that it will more thoroughly dissolve the granules. Emily proclaimed Powdrell's one of the top three sweet teas she'd tasted on all 2,200 miles of Route 66.
My test for really good barbecue was the sliced beef. It's hard to barbecue beef correctly. Often it becomes dry and nearly tasteless. Powdrell's was juicy, tender and delicious. It's some of the best barbecued beef we've ever had.
Powdrell's also passed our test for the barbecue sauce. Most barbecue sauces are too sweet. This one was tangy with a hint of spice — a lot like the delectable Memphis sauces we've tried over the years. It went well with Emily's ribs, which were meaty and slow-smoked — "the way God intended," Emily says.
The black-eyed peas I had were cooked perfectly with a bit of pork to add to the flavor. Emily said the chili tasted a lot like her mom's chili, with lots of cumin. She also raved over the sweet potato pie filling.
Add a helpful staff and two friendly customers from Los Angeles who raved about the food and flirted with the waitresses, and you have a nearly perfect dining experience. Don't miss Powdrell's, which you can find shortly after you enter the Duke City from the east on the Mother Road.