Lety and I just returned from an interplanetary voyage. Okay, that’s a slight exaggeration, but it did seem way out there to us. We were beamed down to Syracuse, New York, where we visited Lety’s eldest son. He took us to what could just as well have been Jabba the Hutt’s hangout: a place called Dinosaur Ribs.
Why did we go there? Because it’s the go-to place for anyone visiting Syracuse. No doubt it was. Sunday nights are usually slow for eating establishments. It should be even slower for Dinosaur Ribs, which has live blues bands all other nights of the week. But not so. We stepped into the busiest Sunday night eatery that I had ever seen. Waiters with three-foot diameter food and drink-laden trays held high had to sashay through dozens of people who were standing in whatever open areas there were waiting to be seated.
Here’s why. We picked up the smoky barbecue aroma a half a block before we reached the door. Once inside, we no longer needed our noses to pick up on the ambiance, which was a pure St. Louis barbecue pit. Their slogan is Blues, bikers, and barbecue, and it took us just one glance around to nod in the affirmative. The walls were covered with posters hawking Bessie Smith and B.B. King concerts, along with murals of bikers and other good-timers drinking, hustling, and getting down with some groovin’ music.
We waited—standing—for an hour and a half to get a table. And we hung out with no complaint, just like everyone else. It gave us good time to take it all in. Definitely not a family place: there wasn’t a single child. Yet I couldn’t see a reason, as the atmosphere was jovial and I saw only casual alcohol consumption.
Okay, so it wasn’t a family restaurant. But neither was it a raunchy biker hangout. I saw a wide variety of people, from well-dressed out-of-towners to casually-clad locals of all persuasions. Many appeared to be regular customers. There were even couples on first dates.
So what was the magic? You’d think the food, but I couldn’t imagine anyone actually living on the stuff. Only potter’s clay would sit heavier in your gut. A typical plate—excuse me, platter—consisted of a foot-and-a-half long rack of ribs laying beside hefty globs of beans, macaroni and cheese (really!), and cornbread. No vegetables.
Lety and I decided to join in anyway. We took it as a good opportunity to check one off of our life list. Yet we wanted to keep from sinking the next time we swam, so we scoured the menu for some veggies. We found two: collards and fried green tomatoes.
At least they were veggies in name. The collards tasted like—you guessed it—barbecue. Which was not surprising, considering that they were 50% meat. Actually, everything tasted like barbecue except the cornbread. How they missed that must have been an oversight. Alright, with food that could double for cement mortar, with no one belting out the blues, and with it being a typical slow night, why did this place not only still pull people in, but all kinds of people?
Authenticity. Many eating establishments create atmospheres that are blatantly fake. The Olive Garden is hardly a veranda in Venice, and Peking Palace makes me feel like I’m in Cathay as much as my Hawaiian shirt puts me on Waikiki. But when you sit down at Dinosaur Ribs, the table itself tells you that this is the real deal. There isn’t a square inch that hasn’t been “customized.” And I’m not talking scratches, but some serious knife work. From names and slogans to random gashes, there’s no way the barbecue sauce splatterings aren’t going to permanently stain the etchings.
The same with the bathrooms. A quick coat of paint takes care of the graffiti in most facilities, but not at Dinosaur Ribs. Just like the tables, what’s on those walls—even the mirror frame and door—are there to stay.
It all spoke a sense of place, of belonging. The extremely casual atmosphere made everybody feel comfortable and welcome. No matter how you were dressed, how you wore your hair, or what your skin color, there’s no way that you could feel out of place. The genuineness and lack of pretense made everybody feel at home, even if they had to stand for an hour or more before getting a table.
In the ultimate, I think people are drawn to Dinosaur Ribs to experience the sense of clan. The formality and regimentation of other eateries—even fast food places, with their ordering and pickup protocols—cause one to feel like an outsider who must conform in order to be accepted. At Dinosaur Ribs, there are no rules other than common courtesy and the beckoning to leave your world behind and drop in on another one, where everybody is welcome and there is no pretense or expectation to be anyone but who you are.
Now, if only they could do something about that food…