Chelsea newcomer Hill Country is not only the friendliest BBQ restaurant I’ve been to, it’s perhaps the friendliest restaurant I’ve been to, period. And that unnerved me. I half expected Charlton Heston to burst through the door mid-meal and shout that my ribs were made out of people.
The Hill Country cult begins with the charming young lady in a white smock and a navy Hill Country logo baseball cap standing outside the door. Unexpectedly, she was stationed there not to fast-talk me inside, but to greet me as I entered. Fucking Bob Evans doesn’t even do that.
Inside, another woman wearing a white smock and a navy Hill Country logo baseball cap handed me a meal card and asked if I’d been to the restaurant before. I grow leery when a restaurant staffperson asks me this because it often signals a gimmick of preparation or presentation, something like, “For every entrée you finish, we will release a cascade of party balloons directly over your table” or “Once you’re seated, you should expect our in-house mime to enact the wine list.”
And the meal card thing is a little gimmicky, but it sort of makes sense. You pick up a cafeteria-style tray and take the card first to the beverage area, which is a vintage 1950’s style corner-shop soda cooler. There you pick your Pabst or from a variety of other bottled beers and a smattering of old-time-favorite sodas (Welch‘s Grape! Big Red!). Then you move to the station with the pork, beef and chicken, sold by the pound and stickered with a deli-style UPC. Finally, you make your way to the side-dish station for yams and mac & cheese and baked beans and such, and if your eyes are bigger than your stomach, the “Sweets & Treats” station featuring pies, cobblers, cakes and, direct from Texas, Blue Bell ice cream. Everything ordered is duly checked-off the card, which you present at a register near the front after you’ve seated yourself and eaten.
At the beverage and food-group counters, everyone is as cheerful as costumed theme-park mascots. I tell you I am not exaggerating: behind the meat-and-sausage counter stood six guys, each wearing the smock/cap uniform and each burly but friendly in a “guy behind the meat counter” sort of way. Each also had an overeager smile and attitude, poised at the ready to serve my every need, or at least every one involving a meat product. It was eerie. They all smiled and stared at me as I scrutinized the menu board above their heads and glinting teeth. After I’d decided on the pork ribs, the meat man nearest me advanced to dish out my selection and nothing appeared to give him more satisfaction then when he plunked them onto a sheet of brown butcher paper, weighed and stickered the order, then twisted the ends of the paper and crinkled up the sides to form a cozy nest of fatty, smoked goodness.
As usual I’m being a tad unfair for attempted entertainment purposes because I was eating at 5:30 p.m., when dinner hasn’t yet entered the average New Yorker’s conscious. As the time wore on during my meal, the place filled with customers, steadily necessitating those brigades of cheerful meatmongers and other servers.
The ribs were great: jumbo and oak-smoked with a crackling, snappy skin. They were dry-rubbed, so no sauce, though there was some in a caddy atop the table, along with the silverware (in a mason jar, naturally) and—hurrah!—a big stack of those individually rolled heavy-duty wet-naps. Rustic charm abounds: wood-plank floors, unfinished straight-backed wooden chairs and tables, big ol’ stacks of firewood in the back, various old photos and signs all over the place, like an antiques barn or eBay exploded in there. Seems like a great place for parties, and for people who really like really, really friendly service.
Hill Country
- 30 W. 26th St. (between Sixth and Broadway)
- (212) 255-4544
- Meal 23 of 52: a mess of pork ribs ($15.40), a small mac & cheese ($4.50) and a PBR ($4).