Wednesday 31 July 2019

MOE's BBQ - Ottawa ON


I love me some BBQ. It's not always easy to get good American Southern BBQ in Canada, and rarely is it authentic. That's ok because sometimes you find something new that tastes good. So when I heard a new BBQ place opened up in Ottawa, I was excited to try it. 


 When Moe's BBQ opened, I was intrigued that they advertise as the only Halal certified BBQ joint in the city. So that means no pork - no pork ribs, no pulled pork. But there's lots of beef and chicken. I was excited to see on the menu that they had Smoked Hot Wings. I was ready to go, and then I saw the price - $21 for 1lb of wings. Yes it came with 2 sides, but that was too steep for me, so going went on the back burners.


I started following them on social media, and one day they announced a special for wings. It was great, but by the time I read it was in the evening long after dinner. It wasn't a regular wing night special, and I was kinda bummed. I had seen other people post photos on social media of their wings and I was really jealous. Then one day it all came together - they posted another wing special, I was hungry and free for dinner, so off to Moe's I went!


Moe's sits in a little sad strip mall. Driving in you don't notice it, but when you are right out front you can't miss the pictures of brisket and BBQ sandwiches. Inside has a nice BBQ joint feel, with lots of wood themed decorations. I went in May during Ramadan and the place was pretty quiet - in fact the only sound in the place was the fireplace playing on a tv with the sounds of crackling and snaps you get with fire. There was only one other guy eating at the time. By the time I left, I had seen plenty of delivery service pick ups and people in for take-out and was told that once sundown happened the place would be jammed.


You mosey on up to the counter and order from there. The menu is up on big screens but they also have a physical menu to hold and check out. There were only two guys working and one came from the back. He was friendly, but when I mentioned the wing special on Instagram, he didn't know anything about it. He asked me to show it to him, and then he was like "Awesome!" as in I found a good deal. There are no sauce choices for the wings, but he did ask what sides I wanted pointing out 3 new ones to the menu. I picked my sides, and he asked what table I was going to sit at, so he could deliver the wings when they were ready.


I grabbed a drink from the fridge and took my seat. I didn't have to wait long, and soon I had an awesome looking platter of BBQ before me. I was pumped.


The two sides I went with were Smoked Beans and Cornbread. The smoked beans looked really good and smelt good, but I quickly noticed it wasn't the usual BBQ bean fare of pinto beans, but instead kidney beans. The flavour had a nice smokiness to them, and almost a meaty quality (hopefully with BBQ drippings) but as much as I liked the sauce flavour, an entire bowl of kidney beans was just too much for me. The cornbread was fairly thick, dense, but a balance between dry and moist. It wasn't too sweet, nice corn flavour.

There were two side sauces in tiny little cups. The dark sauce was their Signature BBQ Sauce, which was quite sweet. I liked it, but wouldn't want my wings completely covered in it. In the other cup was what looked like an Alabama White Sauce, as it was creamy, but also had a lot of bite. I would love a big tub of this sauce to dip my dry wings in. It was awesome.



The wings come in orders by the pound, but the wings are served whole. You get 7 whole wings, which breaks down to about 14 individual wings. I don't mind getting the whole wings because you still get the tips and while not everyone cares for them, I love the crispy little pieces with a little bit of extra skin and crunchy cartilage.


However you get an idea how small these wings are when you think about getting 14 in one pound. They are average meatiness relative to their size. At least you get a whole wing and that feels bigger.



The texture on the skin is mostly crispy due to the charring from the grill, but it's not uniform. The meat is SUPER tender though. The wings just pull apart easily and the chicken inside is most and tender. Most smoked wings are tough and dried out, but not these.



The wings don't come with a sauce, but they are rubbed in a seasoning blend. It isn't strongly flavoured, but there is what I think was fennel, of which I am not a fan on it's own, but it worked with the chicken.


Sadly, there was almost no smoked flavour to the wings. I even questioned if they were smoked because they weren't tough texture-wise nor had that distinct flavour. But because they were fire grilled, they did have that slight fire kissed taste. 


Overall I was expecting a much bolder flavour. These wings had great texture, and they tasted good don't get me wrong. I just expected more. More seasoning or at least more smoke.



 FINALS SCORE:

I definitely enjoyed my BBQ wings at Moe's. The wings were so tender, had some nice char and a good flavour - I just expected a bigger punch in seasoning or spice. The white sauce that came with it was soo good. Cornbread was good and the beans, while in a tasty sauce, was just too much as they were just kidney beans. I'd go back to try other fare, and I would have the wings again, but only when on special personally. 9.5/15



Moe's BBQ
2446 Bank Street, Ottawa ON
moesbbq.ca



Tuesday 30 July 2019

Celebration National Chicken Wing Day @ St Louis & Big Bone BBQ

Monday was a beautiful day.

I'm not talking about weather, I'm talking about it being National Chicken Wing Day.
I saw my social media filled with people celebrating with so many delicious wings. I celebrated too:


First, LJ & I celebrated early on Sunday with some dry rubbed baked wings:


Those were really good.

I moved on for lunch to St Louis to get some free wings:


The Hot and the Mississippi BBQ were really hot, crispy, fresh and saucy. It was a great lunch.


For dinner, we went for something different and checked out a BBQ joint, Big Bone BBQ & Wicked Wings.


My full review of BBB&WW will come out eventually.


How about you - did you celebrate? How many wings did you have?



Monday 15 July 2019

LOTW Meme Monday = Area 51 Raid for ET Wing Recipe





There's a big prank on Facebook where someone has created a fake event for over 1 million people to storm Area 51 and "see them aliens" - I mean, we've all wanted to know what really goes on there. Because maybe E.T. has kick ass chicken wing recipe?!?!

#nonwingsunday = Chocolate Chip Banana Bread


500 Followers on Instagram!





Wasn't even paying attention and then BAM! 500. That may be nothing for lots of Instagrammers out there who have thousands, but that's a lot of people who want to watch my wing adventures happening in Ottawa, Ontario, Canada.

Thanks everyone - and if you aren't following, find me at @lotw_wingking !!!

Wednesday 10 July 2019

PITA BELL KABAB - Ottawa ON

Most of my wing eating comes in the form of experimentation. I don't have a regular place that I go to for wings all the time. More often than not, I'm trying out somewhere I've never been before because I am exploring strange new wings, seeking out new flavours and different cooking ideas, to bodly go where no wing has gone before. That's how I came to try Pita Bell Kabab wings.


Pita Bell Kabab (PBK as I will call it), is located on Carling Ave in Ottawa's west end. It's housed in a strip mall with a hair salon, dentist, nail salon, and a tactical gear store. It's one of those malls for me I have driven past so many times and not stopped in or even realized what was there.


PBK occupies the far left end of the mall and from the outside, looks like a dive middle eastern take-out. Inside, I was quite surprised how wrong my expectations were. It's very modern looking, clean, and decorated with fancy chandeliers. It's still got a big take-out counter with giant menu board, but there is lots of seating for individuals and families.

Another misconception I had when I had about this place when it opened up was I assumed it was just another shawarma shop in a city of soo many shawarma shops. But it's not. While it is Middle Eastern, they are Turkish cuisine focused on charcoal grilling and kebabs. They don't even have shawarma! But shawarma in Ottawa is Lebanese eats, so of course it's not served here.



The place was really busy with both dine-in orders and take-out. The woman taking orders at the front counter seemed overwhelmed at times as there were lots of walk in customers as well as the phone ringing off the hook for other orders. I could faintly smell the scent of charcoal, and I could see the smoke outside from the chimney, so I was excited to try their charcoal grilled wings. I wanted to ask a bunch of questions, but the place was just too busy, so I just asked for the wings and to have it to go. I was told it would be about 9 minutes.

I took a seat and people watched for those roughly 9 minutes. Lot's of different people from construction workers, families, business guys all getting what looked to be pretty tasty dishes. When my wings were ready I slipped through the crowd of people ordering, people waiting for food, and the phone constantly ringing. The lady at the counter asked if I wanted a sauce with it - I asked what my choices were - she in the midst of packing other orders told me BBQ, honey garlic, hummus (hummus does not sound like a very good wing dip) and maybe another sauce. No hot option but I suspect they have hot and it's not as popular. BBQ sounded best to go with the charcoal grilled wings.


I grabbed my take-out bag and went to grab my drink - it's all Coke products, which I prefer, but they had no diet options at all. No Diet Coke, no Coke Zero. Weird. I headed out to the car and opened my lunch with excited anticipation. The wings came in those round Chinese food containers, with a big size of BBQ sauce, a fork and napkins. They smelled, really good.


They looked really good too.



The wings looked really good to me too. They had that charring on the outside that wasn't offputting/burnt looking, just good. You could see spices from the marinade and I was drooling from the smell and the look. The wings at PBK come in orders of 12 or 24 wings, and I went with 12. In that 12 I got 6 flats and 6 drums equally.


The wings were a bit on the small side in terms of length and were relatively meaty based on their size. The skin was crispy-ish for having been cooked over coals, which was a really nice texture.



The meat itself was very tender. It didn't pull from the bone very easily though, but this is a common issue with grilled wings. But so tender. I'm pretty sure these were made from fresh not frozen wings.


I started off eating the wings without the sauce to try them as they were. They were good. The marinade/seasoning was very tasty but mild. I couldn't identify the spices exactly, but it was salty & earthy. And of course, you have that smokey charcoal flavour that just tastes so rustic and good.


I also had the BBQ sauce that was given in a generously sized container. After eating several wings plain, I figured it was time to bring out the sauce.


The BBQ sauce was thick and poured in the viscous way I want when I have a BBQ sauce.




It was a dark sauce, a bit smokey, a bit sweet, but mostly savoury. It was good on it's own, but it paired really well with the charcoal cooked chicken.


FINAL SCORE:

Wow these wings were really good. There's a good if not slightly mild marinade on the chicken, that tastes great on the smokey charcoal grilled wings. It's great as is, but then I added the BBQ sauce and it just made these into a different delicious animal. Going forward I would do the same thing again - eat about half as they are, and half tossed in the sauce. The wings aren't big, but they are so very tasty.

11/14


Pita Bell Kabab
1846 Carling Ave, Ottawa ON
pitabellkabab.com