Dreamland Bar-B-Que - Tuscaloosa, Alabama

Pretty much every single time I have watched a home Alabama football game at some point the announcers mention Dreamland Bar-B-Que. On message boards, Alabama fans brag that they got their tailgating catered by Dreamland. Certainly, it is a Tuscaloosa institution. I’ve been wanting to try it for years, and I had filed it away as a must-try given the chance.

Well, the chance arrived only yesterday, and what-the-Hell, Alabama? Forgive me, but what the actual Hell? This is considered good barbeque in Tuscaloosa? I have had better ribs, far better ribs, at non-descript gas stations.

Ribs is supposed to be their thing, too, which is what makes this double-weird. According to the rather bored waitress, ribs was the only meat they served for years and years until recently when they added a chopped pork sandwich and some sausage links. After she brought our food, we never saw her again, and she messed up our order, but at that point I didn’t care enough to complain. I had to ask somebody, “Do I get the chance to pay here, or is it just free?”

So, we are talking about a place with poor customer service, which claims to have mastered the pork rib, but which serves a thoroughly mediocre pork rib.

You can probably tell in the picture, these are gnaw-on-the-bone ribs, little-meat-fibers-stuck-in-your-teeth ribs. People talk a lot about the proper consistency for ribs, and the general consensus seems to be they they should have just the slighest, tiniest resistance to the bite, like a frog hair of resistance so as to maintain the integrity of the meat. I mean, you don’t want baby food, but you don’t want to sit and gnaw on a bone, either. Dreamland’s ribs were undercooked, pure and simple. I didn’t enjoy them at all.

The pork sandwich was okay, and it was better than the ribs for sure. The sides were, in fact, all made in house, so they got that right at least. They have a good potato salad, a mediocre slaw, and baked beans right out of the can.

A thing they do, and they are famous for this: They bring you a plate with several slices of just plain white bread and a few cups of their house barbeque sauce, so you can sit there and dip the bread in it while they get your meat ready. I mean, that’s fine, but who cares about bagged white bread? I could go the rest of my life and never eat it again, and I’d never miss it.

Maybe they are a victim of high expectations, but I don’t think that’s the case for me. The ribs just weren’t good, and I walked out happy I’d checked this one off the list so I don’t have to go back.