Summer has arrived in all its blazing radiance with its natural corollaries, picnicking, porch-sitting, tea-drinking, socializing, swatting, swimming and variations of beach laziness, like interminable poker and video games, or the ultimate in desperation TV — reruns of “Knight Rider.”
Boredom, relieved by intermittent activity, sure does inspire the appetite. And what better way to celebrate summer than to dine on that most plebian of cuisines, barbecue?
Too relaxed to grill it yourself? So am I.
So I ride over the Gandy Bridge for a filling hit of smoky fare, minus the hassle. Set in a modest shopping center in Pinellas Park, Roger’s Real Pit Bar-B-Que is easy to miss with your eyes, but your nose will detect the oak wood smoke that beckons at certain times of the day. Caveat No.1 for detecting a decent barbecue restaurant: If you’re less than a half-block away and still can’t smell the smoke, forget it.
You don’t have to dress up, as Roger’s is casual. Its tables and booths are clean, but bare of tablecloths and the walls are decorated with weird antiques — old toys, farm implements and pictures of Seaboard Coast Line locomotives. Country background music reinforces that down-home feel.
The friendly waitress brings 32-ounce glasses of cola and heavily iced tea almost immediately, along with a huge menu listing everything from a simple kid plate of hotdogs and beans all the way to a smoked prime rib au jus.
Even light eaters, vegans and vegetarians might like Roger’s because its concept of barbecue is broad. Its salad bar offers more than 50 dishes, six homemade dressings and two soups. If that’s not enough, the menu includes a good choice of atypical barbecue fare as well — fresh fish, shrimp, chicken, “Jackie’s Lo-Cals,” — named for owner Jackie Mathews — and even a veggie burger.
In previous visits, the service has been exemplary, but this time, the waitress seemed to be having an off day; our dishes sat too long on the table, she forgot my coffee and we had trouble getting the check. Fortunately, we were in a leisurely frame of mind and we didn’t really care how long it took; but it wasn’t the happy, hustling service I remember from previous visits.
Still, I’m going to consider it an anomaly because the family-owned restaurant has quite a track record: Its Largo restaurant has been open 25 years; the one in Pinellas Park, 18 years; and its Clearwater location, 11.
Start with the salad bar — you get a real dinner plate, not a teensy salad plate, and a separate soup cup ($5.25 per person, $2.75 with a meal and $5.25 for take-out). The huge salad buffet occupies one whole end of the restaurant. Perched on ice are dozens of different dishes starting with chopped lettuce, piles of peppers, cucumbers, sprouts, carrots, tomatoes, broccoli, cauliflower, red and garbanzo beans and marinated bean dishes, pasta salad, coleslaw, applesauce and cottage cheese. You’ll also find cubes of Swiss and Cheddar, crackers, sesame seeds, croutons, raisins, six types of homemade dressings (one suggestion: more low-fat dressings), plus Jell-O and pudding for light dessert.
The day we were there, there were also two soups, one a creamy “beef stroganoff” with ground beef and pasta accented by a sour creamy broth and vegetable beef, tomatoey broth set with veggies. Both of them delish.
It took us a while to order entrées because there were so many. Finally, I settled upon a grilled combination plate featuring a simple butterflied chicken breast and 10 medium-size shrimp skewered on a kebob and coated with sweet-and-sour sauce ($9.25). It came with a choice of baked, sweet or french-fried potatoes, cornbread or garlic bread and coleslaw (add $2.75 for soup and salad bar, or, if you’re dining in, $1.75 for a garden salad).
My dining companion ordered a barbecued pork sandwich (regular $2.95, jumbo $3.35), a hearty pile of tender, smoked meat set on soft, grilled garlic bread with a generous side order of barbecued beans ($1.45), tangy with feel-good tomato sauce and fortified with bits of smoked meat. Though the homemade sauce is labeled “sweet-and-sour,” “hot” and “mild,” none is going to scorch your mouth. Instead, it provides an insouciant twang.
We also sampled a rack of baby back ribs (half, $9.25, full, $13.95) with sweet-and-sour sauce. They were juicy, tender, gooey, messy and delicious. Caveat No. 2 for detecting a good barbecue restaurant: At the end of the meal, the table should have mountains of used napkins.
Desserts were uneven: Peach cobbler ($2.50) was homemade but disappointingly mushy and bland. It needed crispier dough, maybe made with more butter, and more liberal douses of cinnamon and nutmeg. The pies are made elsewhere. The Graham-cracker crust on the Key lime pie ($2.50) was limp from being too long in the fridge. However, we liked the apple pie with cider sauce ($2.50), a plain piece of pie with reasonably good pastry crust and tender apple filling, and French silk pie ($2.50), perfect, crunchy crust with a cool chocolate filling.
Though our ride home was punctuated with groans from overeating, Roger’s left us satisfied, fat and happy.
Food Editor Sara Kennedy dines anonymously, and Weekly Planet pays for her meals. She can be reached at sara.kennedy@ weeklyplanet.com or 813-248-8888 ext. 116.
This article appears in Jul 3-9, 2003.
