3/31/2000 - Where there's smoke ... Craig Hofman has them lining up to get into Lucille’s, his hot new barbecue place in Long Beach’s Towne Center.
Read the rings for real barbecue.

American: If you can survive the wait, you’ll feast on great smoked meats and other grand dishes at Lucille’s Smokehouse Barbecue in Long Beach.

By Al Rudis

Have you ever wondered if you’re eating authentic barbecue or just something covered with sauce? Use Chris Ferrell’s method and you can read your dinner like a tree.

Ferrell is the chef at Lucille’s Smokehouse Barbecue, the new theme restaurant in Long Beach’s Towne Center where the crowds are lining up to get in nearly every night.

When a batch of barbecue is finished in his smoker, he and his assistant, Domingo Ramos, take some of it into a back room, taste it “and check to see if it has the characteristics we’re looking for, if the meat’s falling off the bone and it has a smoke ring.”

“It’s like if you’re cutting into a tree and look at the rings. During the smoking process, the smoke penetrates the meat you’re cooking and leaves a ring all the way around that’s generally a pinkish color. It’s a good way of knowing that you’re eating real barbecue or something that’s been smoked.”

The barbecue at Lucille’s is darned good. I’m not going to get into any arguments about which style of barbecue is the best or which sauce is the best. As a matter of fact, when I tasted Lucille’s Original sauce, I didn’t think it was that special (there’s also a hot and spicy version) and even felt there was too much hot pepper in it for a mild sauce.

But when the sauce is added to the meats at Lucille’s at the end of a complex barbecuing process, there is a synergy that makes the food delicious. Probably a great sauce that that stood out wouldn’t work as well.

Everything starts in the Southern Pride smoker, a big container that smokes and cooks up to 500 pounds of meat at a time. If you walk into the restaurant and go straight back, you’ll see it for yourself. One night, I had dinner in the booth right next to it.

“it has 15 shelves that are 5 feet long and a foot wide,” said Ferrell. They are hanging, and they rotate like a ferris wheel. It has a rear fire box that we load the hickory wood into and a gas fire on the side that ignites the wood to get it smoking. In the front is a thermostat control dial. We smoke at a consistent temperature of 225 degrees.

“We smoke almost all the meat, with the exception of the steaks: the beef ribs, the baby back ribs, the St. Louis ribs, the tri-tip, half-chickens, chicken breasts, turkey breasts for sandwiches and salads, bacon and pork chops. And we smoke the celery, tomatoes, carrots and onions for the smoked tomato soup, and the jalapenos for the smoked jalapeno tarter sauce. And specials, too; this month we’re smoking the prime rib special.”

The problem with all this is that each item has a particular time that it needs to cook in the smoker. And that is why the smoker is operated by a smoker.

“We have a full-time position for what we call a smoker,” said Ferrell. “They are responsible for the marination, rubbing and preparation of all the smoked meat and other smoked items. We direct them in the morning as to what the priorities are. We’ll tell them, for example, they need to do 200 pounds of pork butt today.

“They have a list and watch what goes in, and they time everything. Some items we check using a digital probe thermometer, such as the chicken or the prime rib. And others we take out and test.”

The restaurant is serving so many meals that the chefs and the smoker person must be on the ball. The first time I ate a Lucille’s, customers were told that certain items wouldn’t be ready for a half-hour. But Ferrell says that now they have pretty much figured out what they will need, and that doesn’t happen anymore.

Except for a couple of side dishes that were merely adequate, everything I tasted at Lucille’s including:

Onion straws. Red onions that are thinly sliced, soaked in buttermilk and dredged in a flour seasoned wit