Wood Ranch BBQ: Them Bones Are Me
Wood Ranch BBQ & Grill is finger-licking elegant
By: Braxton Leeds
Wood Ranch is an eleven-store SoCal mini-chain boasting something most elegantly—yet totally nonthreateningly—called a “premium casual” dining experience . . . meaning everything looks immaculate but this is still a barbecue joint that you can suck on your fingers at. (Pretty ingenious when you think about it). It’s wide open and very airy; the full bar glows most invitingly; the waiters and waitresses are starched, quaffed and manicured to a particular standard. Another of the nuevo-chic type that goes for down-home comforts, and pretty successful too.
As happens at certain restaurants of the ilk, the waiter asks you if you’ve ever dined at Wood Ranch before when you sit down, as if there’s a secret to it that you should be made imminently privy to. “Huh-uh, no,” my friend and I said. He proceeded to tell us that they used the sacrosanct two-step cooking process, whereby all choice meats such as tri-tips and prime rib are slow-roasted overnight for 18 hours, then grilled and sauced over a “live” mesquite wood fire to create the perfect barbecue. That sounded great, and, being there for lunch, we ordered the tri-tip and a rack of babyback ribs, along with some chips and salsa.
First they bring out a basket of bread rolls that are glistening with butter and flecks of garlic and leafy substance (parsley?), a fine indication of hospitality. The chips and salsa ($4.95) were unique in that the chips were long like protractors, and still warm; the salsa fresh. Within 15 minutes, everything was out on the table—the babybacks ($13.95) slathered with the piquant Wood Ranch sauce with mac and cheese (our choice), and likewise the tri-tip ($13.95), which was not sliced but served as an inch-and-a-half-thick slab with salted fries. In retrospect I think we missed the boat by foregoing the original peanut coleslaw as a side, or the smashed sweet potatoes—but as Lord Nelson once said, “standards first, then eccentricities.”
As far as barbecue goes, “it’s definitely no Salt Lick,” as my companion observed—and to be fair, this is Corona and not Austin, Texas. The tri-tip was prepared to order, medium, with the flare of pink and all the mesquite smoked juices spilling out and knife-poke; the ribs tender and tearing away from the bone. The barbecue sauce they use on that live flame are savory and memorable, definitely right up near what Famous Dave’s dabs with the brush. Perhaps the best compliment we can pay is that we left nothing of the meats, and only scarce stray macaroni noodles and a few fries—and these only for cosmetic purposes; we didn’t want the waiter to think us hoggish.
Nevertheless, his eyebrows went up when he said, “save room for some deep dish cobbler,” and we told him what presumably 95% of the Wood Ranch patronage tells him—“no thanks, we’re stuffed.” We may be American gluttons, but we’re not liars. We were full.
And that’s probably why it’s a curse to wear the smells of mesquite wood barbecue home every night; too much of a good thing can become a damn bad thing. But once in a while, why not?
Wood Ranch BBQ & Grill, 2785 Lakeshore Drive, Corona, (951) 667-4200. Open Sun.–Thurs., 11:30AM–10PM; Fri. & Sat., 11:30AM–11PM. AE, MC, V
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