The last five years have been terrible for Chicago barbecue. For reasons I still don’t fathom, a relentless plague of half-assed new barbecue restaurants multiplied as insidiously as split-face concrete block, and provoked a kind of fury in me that would ignite my hair every time I had to sit down and write about it. This largely north-side problem was compounded when the great Honey 1 BBQ relocated to Bronzeville after ten underappreciated years in Bucktown, where the Adams family was hounded by condo-dwelling NIMBYs panicked by its sweet porky perfume. With just a few exceptions, unless you were smoking your own, real barbecue was largely only available on the south and west sides at spots like Lem’s, Uncle J’s, and Bro-N-Laws Bar-B-Q.
Two miles south in Chatham, Samuel Gilbert opened the takeout-only Full Slab in November, a rebirth of his full-service restaurant in Grayslake that operated from 2006 to 2013 before the recession killed it. Unlike Trice, who learned the barbecue arts from his father in Paducah, Kentucky, Gilbert, an engineer, taught himself, spending his first years conducting R&D on his guests. His ribs and links, cooked on a large Old Hickory offset rotisserie smoker, are meatier, less rendered, and a bit chewier than the Slab’s, though they’re not nearly as smoky. Same goes for wings, finished on a flaming grill. Gilbert offers a somewhat broader menu, with brisket, jerk chicken, pulled pork, and fried catfish, all of which are sandwichable. His fries are hand cut too, both spots perhaps marking some kind of shift in the usual takeout meat-and-potatoes barbecue paradigm.
Slab BBQ | $ 1918 E. 71st 773-966-5018slabbbq.com
The Full Slab | $ 8340 S. Stony Island 312-620-7522 847-445-3243thefullslabchicago.com
