6/1/2004 - Lucille's smokes--as long as you stick to classics
It was a weekend night at Lucille's Smokehouse Bar-b-Que, the sort of night when you slip into a comfortable pair of jeans and a washable shirt before heading out for a treat of ribs, chicken, links, beans and corn bread.

Lucille's is a good place in which to dress in down home style, for it may be the most just-plain-folks restaurant in the South Bay - a place to go for sports and music in the bar, and intensely smoky 'que in the main room.

I was appropriately dressed-down, ready to get sauce all over myself. (I'm notorious for winding up with dabs of red on my clothing, no matter how many napkins I use to cover myself.) That's why the people sitting at the next table came as such a surprise. They were an elegant elderly couple, who had clearly dressed for dinner -- not dinner at a fancy French restaurant, but dinner at a backstreet jazz boite in the French Quarter of New Orleans.

She was wearing a dress with enough frills on it for a dozen prom outfits, topped by a hat that looked a bit as if the Hindenburg had landed on her head. And she was the more modestly attired of the pair. He was coutured in a fire-engine red suit, with six buttons up the front. He had a matching fire engine red pork pie hat on his head. And I had to look -- yup, his shoes were fire engine red...and patent leather.

Fan that I am of fine haberdashery, I was duly dazzled.Much of my meal was taken up (in between bites and chews and licks) by wondering where exactly you get clothing such as that -- I've never seen fire engine red suits being sold at Nordstrom or Macy's, though admittedly, I haven't looked very hard for them. I have seen the shoes in the back of men's fashion magazines, though I never thought I'd actually see them in person.

The point is that Lucille's Smokehouse Bar-B-que is such an eminently comfortable restaurant, diners feel free to dress however they want to dress.

Most tables are taken up by large family groups, a dozen or more, encompessing several generations. It's a bit like our several Chinese seafood palaces, where you see everyone from great-grandma down to babes in arms. This is a restaurant that's managed to replace dining at home as an option.

It would take days to cook the food they serve here at home -- and it would very possibly cost more.

In the approximately three years since Lucille's first opened, it's expanded into new locations (two in Long Beach, one in Brea, with new branches about to open in Rancho Cucamonga and, but of course, Henderson, Nev.).

It's a chain that's on the verge of joining the Cheesecake Factory, the Yard House and Claim Jumper as a Destination of Choice where diners are more than willing to wait hours for a table. At Lucille's, though, the wait can be especially pleasant if you can find a spot in the bar, where there are TV sets tuned to every major sporting event, live music in the evening, and a very extensive selection of cocktails.

Now, I'm the sort of feller who firmly believes that what you drink with your ribs is, in descending order: Beer, lemonade, beer, iced tea and beer. But I salute those who are made of sterner stuff than me and can get comfortable sliding into a Back Porch Strawberry Lemonade (jazzed up with Stoli Strawberry Vodka and Triple Sec), or a Dixieland Peach Tea ( with Makers Mark Bourban and Peach Schnapps).

There's also one of the few Mint Julep menus around. You get a choice of eight "porch sipping whiskeys" -- Makers Mark, Rebel Yell, Wild Turkey, Jack Daniels, Old No. 7, Knob Creek, Gentleman Jack, Bakers 107 and Bookers. Now, that's serious stuff.

But the bottom line is the 'que, served in copious quantities, smoked in a Rube Goldberg-esque machine (made by Souhtern Pride, but renamed the "Original Do-Rite Smokin' Machine") near the kitchen (though I've never actually been there when the machine has been turned on, so it's possible it's a prop -- albeit a very large and convoluted prop).

I find that if you stick to