Photos and blog post by John HoffJC's Barbeque has been open for more than a year at 2117 West Broadway near the Five Points building. It's yet another "wings and things" place on Broadway, with a sideline in gyros. If you took all the "wings and things" places in North Minneapolis, lined them up end to end, and put a match to the first one you would have a domino-effect grease fire visible FROM THE MOON. Not that I'm complaining. There's just no getting around the fact greasy food is yummy.
A couple days ago I went to JC's for the first time, since my legal nemesis Jerry Moore was standing in line at the Cub Foods deli counter and I didn't want to stand near and have him say (yet again) he just wants me to know "we're cool" and I'd have to tell him, yet again, "If you have something to say to me, go through your lawyer." Oh, have I mentioned lately: Repeated and specific evidence in Hennepin County District Court shows Jerry Moore was involved with a high profile fraudulent mortgage at 1564 Hillside Ave. N.
So I left Cub and went to JC's, since it was the nearest place I knew of to get fried chicken not counting Olympic Cafe, which is a little too near the "heroin block" of West Broadway for my tastes, even though undercover police recently disrupted a heroin shipment in North Minneapolis, and God Bless the Fourth Precinct. I needed fried chicken because company was visiting in the middle of my girlfriend's kitchen remodel project...
The manager at JC's was so overwhelmingly nice to me I thought "does he know I'm a blogger?" He had me taste the fried zucchini, fretting aloud whether they were overdone. Then he threw in an extra helping of fried zucchini.
I ordered the 30-wing special for $16.99 plus tax--no fries, no drink--and when I got it home I saw several slices of white bread had been included. To me, the difference between real soul food and a place that is merely putting on like it serves soul food is the inclusion of diagonally-sliced white bread.
The fried chicken was perfect. My benchmark for chicken wings is whether the tips of the wings are crisp and edible, instead of being chewy. We enjoyed the wings at dinner, and then ate the leftovers for two days, not wasting a single delicious bite.
Though JC's is a small, humble establishment it's clean and there's no reason to avoid it. The food is good and very affordably priced.
I actually visit Olympic BECAUSE of it's location. If you think that block is bad, you should be encouraging good people to frequent that block. An absence of regular, decent folk only creates a void for negative elements to flourish. And actually, most folks I see going to Olympic are pretty decent. Not to mention Olympic has improved their store front with eyes on the street windows, new bright paint job, and regularly clean their sidewalk. It's also one of the places where you do not get the "ghetto customer service" - they quickly recognized me as a repeat customer and are always give me excellent service and make small chat. I remember a certain block elsewhere in the city that was very troubled and even the cops told me it was not a good idea to walk that block. So I made it a point to walk that block 3 x / day. You don't make a block safer by avoiding it. We need to frequent troubled areas MORE - not avoid them. Avoiding them creates the voids that fuels and magnifies the problems.
ReplyDeleteExcellent point, M. Clinton. On this blog, the "void" you describe has been given a name: decency dead zone. Thankfully we don't have too many of those left in NoMi. I'd say that getting good people on the 2600 block of Emerson Ave N and the 2600 block of Penn would help drive away those decency dead zones. Of course, there are city- and non-profit-owned houses on both of those blocks that are just waiting for...demolition. Ugh.
ReplyDeleteYuck, I can't believe people feed mr. moore. If only his mother hadn't...
ReplyDeleteI'll be honest, I find this kind of food depressing. What I think is really problematic is that when these are the kinds of food choices that are prevalent in the neighborhood, it creates the illusion that this is a normal way of eating, and young people may never be exposed to what a healthy portion of food is, or what healthy food is supposed to taste like. It isn't that it is impossible to get healthy food if you live in NoMi (Seward Co-op is on the #7 bus!), but the problem is that our tastes and expectations tend to be influenced by our surroundings--"hey, everybody is eating this way, so it must be 'normal'."
ReplyDeleteIt's one thing if people have something like this once a week or so, but it really is difficult to be healthy if people are eating this much grease on a regular basis. And food affects not just your physical health, but also your state of mind.
I whole heartedly agree that we have too much greasy food though. If anyone wants some good fresh sandwiches that might actually have veggies on them or pasta salad, the Avenue Eatery (the old Bean Scene Too) has food!
ReplyDelete@ Veg - Did you ever eat at Seward on Fri night, when the Spokes Pizza Collective was operational? BEST PIZZA AVER!
ReplyDelete