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By STEVE & LISA ALCAZARI
Hartford Advocate
June 3, 2005

Stay alert when you make your pilgrimage to Durham for a taste of the fine and thoroughly smoked barbecue at Red Spice & Blues, otherwise you'll miss it. Lisa and I were on the lookout counting addresses, and we almost drove right by. If not for the small handmade sign pointing the way to BBQ, we might have ended up in Guilford.

Red Spice & Blues is a small operation. The staff of four or five labored away mostly out of sight. There are five small tables inside, with a shelf-like counter and stools along one side of the room and a big drink cooler filling the other end.

A few pieces of the requisite pig kitsch of southern barbecue joints adorned the inside (why every BBQ joint in the Northeast has to employ a blues theme is still a mystery to me). Out front is a prime picnic table. And that's about it for seating. We stopped in on a lovely sunny Saturday afternoon, the kind of day that makes you feel like you've been genetically programmed to go get BBQ. A line of customers threaded along the wall and up to the door. Most of the orders were to go.

There are non-BBQ items at Red Spice & Blues. They have daily seafood specials, chicken wings and burritos. The sandwich offerings include pulled BBQ pork, pulled BBQ chicken, BBQ beef brisket, fried chicken, or buffalo chicken served with blue cheese. The menu also includes fish and chips, coconut crusted shrimp, fried clams and crab cakes. Wanting to take in as much as possible, I signed on for a combo sample that included pulled pork, bbq chicken, ribs and two side orders. For sides there's cole slaw, mac and cheese, BBQ beans, corn on the cob, potato salad and beans and rice. We claimed a small table in the corner and waited for our big order.

Considering all the action, it wasn't long before our food was brought out in little wax-paper-lined baskets to our table. My sampler was immense -- with half of a chicken, a half rack of ribs, and a pile of pulled pork. At $19.99 it's not cheap eating, but there's easily enough for two.

Barbecue fans tend to zero in on specific details. For some, it's the fall-off-the-bone factor -- the meat has to be juicy and tender, well cooked but not dried out. For others, it's the peculiar sweet tang of the barbecue sauce -- a first-rate sauce can even redeem mediocre brisket. Slather enough of it on and anything becomes good. And then there are the smoke and spice hounds, the purist/extremists who insist that good barbecue is good without any extras -- those long hours shrouded in clouds of hard-wood smoke, the top-secret spice rubs and the liquid concoctions known as "mops" (some use combinations of things like coffee, coke, beer or whiskey) should be enough to send the taste buds spinning.

One can specify "spicy" or "mild" with the sauce at Red Spice & Blues. I went spicy, and just about everything on my platter was thoroughly slathered in the sweetish, tomato-based Kansas-City-style sauce. Lisa had the mild sauce on her ribs, and there was a clear difference. The spicy sauce wasn't overwhelmingly so, but there was a clear kick to it.

What we didn't realize, and what you often can't really know until you've tried a place once or twice, is that the BBQ at Red Spice & Blues has a considerable dry rub of spice. The ribs and chicken hardly needed anything added to them. Once past the layer of sauce, the meat had an alluring dark crust, and inside it was tender and surprisingly smoky.

The side orders were less successful. Not being the season for such things yet, the corn on the cob was small and the kernals were tight and bland. The cole slaw, while appealingly mayonnaise-free, had a strange funky twang to it, possibly from the combination of fruity vinegar and cabbage. The beans needed a push in the direction of salty or sweet. And the fluffy cornbread muffins were more muffin than cornbread.

One doesn't expect an impressive selection of desserts at a BBQ place, but Red Spice & Blues has some local business synergy going, and they've teamed up with Cakes Et Cetera, filling their glass-front counter with cakes, pastries, cookies and other baked treats.

The real bargain at Red Spice & Blues might very well their bulk orders. When warm weather actually does arrive and you start to plan those backyard gatherings and park outings, I can't think of a more effortless way of living it up than picking up a $60 "pig-out package" (two quarts of pulled pork, cornbread and three quarts of sides).

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Middlesex County restaurants, Connecticut restaurants, Durham restaurants, Barbecue restaurants