Moe’s BBQ
2446 Bank St. (in the Towngate Shopping Centre), 613- 695-1786, moesbbq.ca
Open: Tuesday to Thursday and Sunday noon to 10 p.m.; Friday and Saturday noon to 11 p.m.; closed Monday
Prices: main courses $18 to $39, burgers $9 and $10
Access: no steps to front door or washrooms
The next time you have a hankering for smoked ribs or chicken, and you think that Moe’s BBQ in South Keys is a little out of your way, just bear in mind the customer who made the trip to Moe’s from Egypt.
A server at Moe’s tells the tale of an Egyptian foodie who had learned of the business at Bank Street and Hunt Club Road via the internet, and planned his North American travels to include a layover in Ottawa to allow for a visit to the no-frills but clean and modern eatery that seats about 30.
For that visitor, not to mention many others, the special allure of Moe’s is that it serves halal barbecue fare — a very rare intersection of Islamic food strictures and meat-centric, U.S. southern-style smoking.
Moe’s BBQ owner and pitmaster Mobeen Butt with his barbecue meats.
On its website, the eatery, whose owner and pitmaster is Pakistan-born Mobeen Hussain Butt, calls itself the first “certified halal southern-style smokehouse in Ottawa.” That understates its uniqueness, I think, given that my internet searches have found just a handful of similar businesses in Houston and Los Angeles.
Other halal eateries in Ottawa that tout their barbecue fare offered charcoal-grilled kabobs and chicken as they’re served in the Middle East or neighbouring Afghanistan. But Moe’s BBQ takes its biggest inspiration from Texas, where beef brisket is the king of meats.
While there are no pork ribs or pulled pork at Moe’s, there are huge, hyper-meaty, well-seasoned beef ribs and pulled-to-order beef that will make carnivores gleeful, all maple-smoked.
Last weekend, I and several other certified barbecue competition judges had dinner at Moe’s, covering our table with butcher-paper-lined metal trays heaped with brisket, beef ribs, pulled beef, pulled beef poutine, chicken legs, chicken wings, buttermilk biscuits, cornbread, coleslaw, and tiny containers of sauce. Ultimately, we enjoyed everything we tried, squabbled about what our favourites had been, missed pork not at all and would happily return.
Brisket is a notoriously difficult meat to barbecue. Even on the competition circuit, pitmasters who screw up can turn in slices of brisket that are inedibly leathery, teeth-rattlingly salty or badly smoked so as to taste of creosote. The brisket we tried at Moe’s was moist, thick-cut and beef-forward in flavour rather than heavily spiced or salted.
Brisket, cornbread, buttermilk biscuit and sauces at Moe’s BBQ
Some brisket aficionados love most of all “burnt ends” — crisp-fatty meat nuggets that are made from the point end of a brisket and require extra work and attention. Moe’s makes the practical choice not to serve burnt ends.
The pulled beef at Moe’s comes from Alberta-raised beef rump and is pulled to order. It was tender but not mushy and better than much pulled pork available elsewhere, which can feel over-sauced and as if it had been sitting around, held at temperature too long.
Pulled beef, cornbread and barbecue chicken at Moe’s BBQ
Beef ribs were meaty and as large as Flintstones-sized specimens with a sweet-spicy glaze that made for much concerted gnawing.
Beef ribs and brisket at Moe’s BBQ
When we ordered barbecue chicken, we were told that the kitchen was short of breast portions, which was fine with us because dark meat takes better to barbecuing. The legs that we received were mellow in flavour, moist if not juicy, and crisp-skinned. Chicken wings were more assertively flavoured and just a touch more dry.
Barbecued chicken at Moe’s BBQ
Chicken wings at Moe’s BBQ
House-made sides — dense cornbread, buttermilk biscuits and coleslaw — were solidly made. The most memorable side was a tray of “BBQ rice,” which consisted of aged basmati rice flavoured with brisket drippings. It was as delicious as it was simple and novel.
Moe’s sauces, offered in small individual servings, could ratchet up the heat and spice a bit, especially with the approach to the meats being so purist, although as barbecue competition judges like to say, “It’s a meat competition, not a sauce competition.”
The next time I visit Moe’s, solo rather than with a pack of meat-lovers, I might have a brisket burger, which stacks slabs of brisket in an Art-is-in Bakery pretzel bun. I might also order one of the desserts (Oreo cheesecake, chocolate ice cream in a waffle cone, or a milkshake). When the judges and I went for dinner, we had wanted something sweet to finish, but Moe’s was so busy that desserts were withheld in favour of opening up our table more quickly to waiting patrons.
The restaurant is not licensed, but its stock of cold drinks does include several fruity flavours of Barbican, a non-alcoholic malt beverage produced in Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates.
Pitmaster Butt, who is 29, worked as a mechanic and commercial cleaner before he and his wife saved enough money to open the restaurant.
He said this week that he’s been interested in barbecuing since he was a teenager, when he cooked kabobs and tandoori fare over charcoal. Later, he became fascinated with U.S. southern-style barbecue after watching TV shows on the subject. “It just looked so good,” Butt said. “To me it made sense that it must be really good.
“You want to explore,” Butt added. “I want to experiment, I want to try new flavours, all the flavours that are out there.”
Since Butt eats halal, he has never tried “authentic” barbecue fare, and has assembled his recipes and methods by reading articles and watching videos. “It was just kind of a leap-of-faith thing, I guess,” he said. “Even if it’s not as good as the actual southern style is, I’ll get there.”
One clear endorsement of his food is that the Egyptian who visited Moe’s wanted him to open a location in Egypt. “They said it would do really well,” Butt said. “He said the town he’s from loves meat.” Toronto entrepreneurs have made similar offers, Butt added. But he is resisting, preferring to focus on keeping standards high at his Ottawa location.
While his first week of cooking at Moe’s made him wonder if he’d made a mistake, Butt now says: “I love it. I love when it’s busy. There are days I take a day off and I miss it, cutting the meat and pulling the meat. It’s my dream job.”
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