Porky's BBQ

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Front Street 
Bebside
Blyth 
Northumberland
NE24 4HW 

01670 820 599
Accessibility? Yes 
Gluten free? Yes   

www.facebook.com/porkysblyth  

First impressions can be so deceptive.  Porky’s, just off the A189 in Blyth, shares a car park with a large raw meat vendor called The Fat Butcher and a hut bearing a promise to buy your car on the spot. Handy if you’ve a knackered old wreck you want to trade for a piece of brisket, but not the most romantic of settings. 

Pretty authentic, though: in the States, BBQ joints are often to be found on the edge of town in non-auspicious settings. I guess it keeps the rent, and therefore the price of meat, low; and it also stops residential areas reeking of hickory smoke. This car park certainly had a distinctive smell about it.

Red's True Barbecue

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Unit 6, Grey’s Quarter 
Intu Eldon Square 
Newcastle upon Tyne 
NE1 7AP 

0191 673 0073 
www.truebarbecue.com 

Accessibility? Yes 
Gluten free? Yes 

In these troubled times of #cleaneating, #gettheglow and who knows how many other wheezes designed to inspire guilt and remorse, especially in January, there’s something delightfully transgressive about sitting down with the sole intention of eating as much meat and fried food as possible in a single meal. And then ordering dessert. Through this prism, our recent trip to Red's True Barbecue can be seen not just as a meal, but as a politically informed act of resistance. So come brothers and sisters! Man the barricades! Comrade, pass me the hot sauce! 

That’s my only excuse for the sheer gluttony we indulged in over a couple of hours in this recently opened outpost of the small but growing barbecue chain – 8 restaurants at the last count. Newcastle doesn’t lack home-grown protein-centric joints, with Longhorns and Bierrex doing very capable things with their smoky lumps of cow and pig. So what does Red’s bring to the table? 

A whole liturgy of mock-Christian branding, for one thing. 

“The pearly gates of your new church of worship have been flung open in Eldon Square. Come forth and worship at the altar of meat,” preaches the website. 

This branding, from Warm, a design company housed in a decommissioned church in Gateshead, features a knife and fork formed into a cross. The menu is referred to as “The Good Book” and a popup on the web page urges you to “join the flock (enter email address to receive updates and offers)”. 

This theme-park approach to catering gets very annoying very quickly when the food isn’t good enough to distract you from it. I’m sure some may find it offensive. Fortunately, what turned up on our trays almost justified it. Almost.

Bierrex

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82 Pilgrim Street 
Newcastle upon Tyne 
NE1 6JN 

0191 447 7720 
www.bierrex.gustouk.com 

What is it about the barbecue that appeals so much to the male psyche? There has to be more to it than the primal draw of the flame and the hunger-inspiring aroma of rendered animal fat on hot coals. 

There’s something almost masonic about the secret world of rubs, brines and marinades. There are fierce competitions based around the cuisine of the barbie, with grown men fighting for bragging rights over the best pulled pork. I guess that’s why it’s colloquially known as “dude food”. 

And yet, even as someone who is quite openly male, I’ve never quite “got it” when eating at smokehouses, at least on this side of the Atlantic. Despite all the hushed talk of meat provenance and special woods, and the number of days that a piece of cow has spent over low, slow heat, I’ve always thought that the results were, at best, not so much better than what I could achieve myself with a decent marinade and a few bits of charcoal in my Weber. Or at least that was the case until our recent meal at Bierrex.