- Michael Gebert
- Pulled pork sandwich at Dinosaur Bar-B-Que
This is not a review of Dinosaur Bar-B-Que.
And so is Dinosaur Bar-B-Que. The brick building with faux-faded painted signs is designed in full faux honky-tonk. (Hauxnky-tauxnk?) Which, frankly, so was Bub City 20 years ago, and is again now in River North. But Green Street Smoked Meats has set a new bar for fauxing honky-tonks; it’s immersive and gritty, and it feels like an episode of True Blood could break out at any moment. The Ed Debevic’s/sports-bar feel at Dinosaur Bar-B-Que is comfy enough, but nothing you haven’t been to before, many times over the last 20 years.
But now we risk opening a whole can of worms about authenticity and cultural appropriation, which I fear deeply because we’re already seeing people start to see racism in white boys making tacos or whatever, and balkanizing food that way will be the death of food culture (and other parts of our culture, not long after). What brings us together is that at some point all cultures are our patrimony (in a non-gender-specific way, of course). If it’s wrong to make tacos (or takoyaki), next it’ll be wrong to eat them, and pretty soon it’s racist to eat other cultures’ foods and listen to their music and spend money in their restaurants (not that they were ever asked their views on the subject). At that point, I’m giving up and wandering off into the desert like John Wayne at the end of The Searchers.
