WHERE HALAL MEETS BBQ
Moe’s has fans around the globe
The next time you have a hankering for smoked ribs or chicken, and you think that Moe’s BBQ in South Keys is a little out of your way, just bear in mind the customer who made the trip to Moe’s from Egypt.
A server at Moe’s tells the tale of an Egyptian foodie who had learned of the business at Bank Street and Hunt Club Road via the internet, and planned his North American travels to include a layover in Ottawa to allow for a visit to the no-frills but clean and modern eatery that seats about 30.
For that visitor, not to mention many others, the special allure of Moe’s is that it serves halal barbecue fare — a very rare intersection of Islamic food strictures and meat-centric, U.S. southern-style smoking.
On its website, the eatery, whose owner and pitmaster is Pakistan-born Mobeen Hussain Butt, calls itself the first “certified halal southern-style smokehouse in Ottawa.” That understates its uniqueness, I think, given that my internet searches have found just a handful of similar businesses in Houston and Los Angeles.
Other halal eateries in Ottawa that tout their barbecue fare offered charcoal-grilled kebabs and chicken as they’re served in the Middle East or neighbouring Afghanistan. But Moe’s BBQ takes its biggest inspiration from Texas, where beef brisket is the king of meats.
While there are no pork ribs or pulled pork at Moe’s, there are huge, meaty, well seasoned beef ribs and pulled-to-order beef that will make carnivores gleeful — all of it maple-smoked.
Last weekend, I and several other certified barbecue competition judges had dinner at Moe’s, covering our table with butcher-paper-lined metal trays heaped with brisket, beef ribs, pulled beef, pulled beef poutine, chicken legs, chicken wings, buttermilk biscuits, cornbread, coleslaw and tiny containers of sauce.
Ultimately, we enjoyed everything we tried, squabbled about what our favourites had been, missed pork not at all and would happily return.
Brisket is a notoriously difficult meat to barbecue. Even on the competition circuit, pitmasters who screw up can turn in slices of brisket that are inedibly leathery, teeth-rattlingly salty or badly smoked and tasting of creosote. The brisket we tried at Moe’s was moist, thick-cut and beef-forward in flavour rather than heavily spiced or salted.
Some brisket aficionados love most of all “burnt ends” — crisp-fatty meat nuggets that are made from the point end of a brisket and require extra work and attention. Moe’s makes the practical choice not to serve burnt ends.
The pulled beef at Moe’s comes from Alberta-raised beef rump and is pulled to order. It was tender but not mushy, and better than much of the pulled pork available elsewhere, which can feel over-sauced and as if it had been sitting around, held at temperature too long.
Beef ribs were meaty and as large as Flintstones-sized specimens, with a sweet-spicy glaze that made for much concerted gnawing.
When we ordered barbecue chicken, we were told that the kitchen was short of breast portions, which was fine with us because dark meat takes better to barbecuing. The legs that we received were mellow in flavour, moist if not juicy, and crispskinned. Chicken wings were more assertively flavoured and just a touch more dry.
House-made sides — dense cornbread, buttermilk biscuits and coleslaw — were solidly made. The most memorable side was a tray of “BBQ rice,” which consisted of aged basmati rice flavoured with brisket drippings. It was as delicious as it was simple and novel.
Moe’s sauces, offered in small individual servings, could ratchet up the heat and spice a bit, especially with the approach to the meats being so purist, although as barbecue competition judges like to say, “It’s a meat competition, not a sauce competition.”
The next time I visit Moe’s, solo rather than with a pack of meat-lovers, I might have a
brisket burger, which stacks slabs of brisket in an Art-is-in Bakery pretzel bun. I might also order one of the desserts (Oreo cheesecake, chocolate ice cream in a waffle cone or a milkshake).
When the judges and I went for dinner, we had wanted something sweet to finish, but Moe’s was so busy that desserts were withheld in favour of opening up our table more quickly to waiting patrons.
The restaurant is not licensed, but its stock of cold drinks does include several fruity flavours of Barbican, a non-alcoholic malt beverage produced in Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates.
Pitmaster Butt, who is 29, worked as a mechanic and commercial cleaner before he and his wife saved enough money to open the restaurant.
He said this week that he’s been interested in barbecuing since he was a teenager, when he cooked kebabs and tandoori fare over charcoal. Later, he became fascinated with U.S. southern-style barbecue after watching TV shows on the subject. “It just looked so good,” Butt said. “To me, it made sense that it must be really good.
“You want to explore,” he added. “I want to experiment, I want to try new flavours, all the flavours that are out there.”
Since Butt eats halal, he has never tried “authentic” barbecue fare, and has assembled his recipes and methods by reading articles and watching videos.
“It was just kind of a leap-of-faith thing, I guess,” he said. “Even if it’s not as good as the actual southern style is, I’ll get there.”
One clear endorsement of his food is that the Egyptian who visited Moe’s wanted him to open a location in Egypt.
“They said it would do really well,” Butt said. “He said the town he’s from loves meat.”
Toronto entrepreneurs have made similar offers, Butt added. But he is resisting, preferring to focus on keeping standards high at his Ottawa location.
“I love it. I love when it’s busy. There are days I take a day off and I miss it, cutting the meat and pulling the meat. It’s my dream job.”