- Mike Sula
- Brisket from Todds BBQ inside Mariano’s
There’s no kind of restaurant in which self-regard outmatches ability as consistently as the barbecue restaurant. I’m at my wit’s burnt end with the plague of lousy smoked meat that’s swept the city in the last year and a half, but part of what makes it so galling is the tedious Kountry Kitsch these places drape themselves in and the attendant boastfulness about their associated pitmasters. So I was preparing to go nuclear on Todds BBQ, a barbecue stand inside the new Ravenswood mega-Mariano’s, a chain within a chain (there are four other stands in suburban stores). I’ve already warned that the supermarket raw bar could become the new supermarket sushi bar, but supermarket barbecue doesn’t just seem like a bad idea—it seems villainous. Couple that with the cornpone boilerplate on Mariano’s website about “Todd” (no last names please) from the “backwoods of Illinois” (where’s that? Schaumburg?), who grew up smoking his family’s own cows and pigs before embarking on a cross-country barbecue odyssey that concluded with his employment by Big Grocery. I guess. I haven’t yet heard back from Mariano’s about whether Todd really came from the backwoods of the marketing department or not.
