I love smoked meat

I am a huge fan of BBQ. It's probably because I love pork so dang much. Without all the hassle of smoking apparatae, we make a version of BBQ at home, where we take a pork shoulder and rub it all over with our secret homemade rub (kept in a mason jar in the cabinet of course) and let it sit at least overnight. Then I cook it in the crockpot the next day on low for the full 8 hours. You don't even need any liquid in there. The fat does everything for you, and the meat breaks down into the most lovely pulled pork you could imagine. It would only be made better by the insertion of smokiness and bright pink color that comes with smoking.

So since I was loitering yesterday throughout the Arlington/Roslyn area, I decided it would be the perfect opportunity to try the famed Rocklands. My coworkers have absolutely raved about it every time we pass it on the way to our worldwide office. They especially lauded the corn pudding. I think you should judge every BBQ restaurant by their handling of a pulled pork or chopped pork sandwich, so I went traditional yesterday as well. I got the Texas corn pudding for a side and macaroni and cheese. I thought I would be in for the best of treats because the line was out the door. It took 15 minutes to get to the front, and less than 8 minutes (their guarantee) to get the food.

I tried a few chunks of the pork by itself to understand the natural flavor of it and was immediately overcome by the smokiness. They use hickory and another wood to smoke their meats and the taste was way too overpowering. It was interesting, but I think took over the flavor too much. With a large group of what seemed to be coworkers smacking their lips behind me, I next tried the corn pudding and found it to be a little soggy and too savory for my tastes. I could taste onion and celery in it and thought it more to be a mushier corn stuffing rather than a "pudding". Pudding reflects sweetness to an extent and corn can be one of the sweetest most lovely things to eat with a super salty and savory bbq sauce. So that was a little disappointing as well. The mac and cheese was just sub-par compared to Urban, who has a light and buttery sauce with fresh cheese on top. Rocklands relies on the Velveeta-ish cheese for their mac and cheese, and using large shell noodles makes it awkward to pick up with a fork because the noodles were too done and broke easily.

Man, I feel like I'm being a bit harsh here, but I do take good BBQ seriously. Try Urban BBQ to fulfill your pork fantasies.