Year of the Pig

This was a great weekend for pigs and fun. It was Memorial Day weekend, and the M Shanghai String Band headed up to Cape Cod, for some fun, sun, music, and even ribs. We arrived on Friday afternoon and set up camp at Maurice’s campground, which was perfectly pleasant and also the most expensive campground I have ever stayed in, at $80-92 per night (for 2 adjacent tent sites). Oh well, this is Cape Cod, right? If you don’t got money get lost!

Anyway, some of us left the campsite and headed to the nearest beach to check out the surf and skip some rocks, and just down the road my nostrils were greated with the unmistakably delicious smell of hickory smoke. My stomach rumbled as my head turned to the sight of a nice looking smoker right there on the side of the road, a column of rich smoke rolling down the road from Russ and Marie’s Marconi Beach BBQ Restaurant. Marconi Beach, by the way, is the site of one of Guglielmo Marconi’s wireless radio stations. I was excited and knew that BBQ joint was gonna be on my list of tourist attractions while there on Cape Cod.

The next day, several of us showed up hungry for some Barbecue. Squidocto, Glendon and myself split a full rack of ribs, and I can promise you I was excited after seeing that great looking smoker and smelling that hickory smoke up and down the road. The food arrived on a nice lookin platter, served with small sides of BBQ beans, cole slaw, grilled bread and a baked sweet potato with maple cinnamon butter.

I have to say as soon as the ribs were in front of me, the disappointment was already setting in. They were completely slathered and dripping in sauce. Sometimes I am ok with that, but I wasn’t expecting it here. Then I took my first bite, and was disappointed again by the taste and texture. The ribs themselves were quite bland, the sauce sweet and overpowering. The membrane on the boneside of the ribs was still intact, and although it wasn’t that tough, it looked bad and could have led to some of the blandness by preventing the smoke from penetrating into the ribs. The ribs were overly tender and falling off the bone like they had been boiled, however they did show a smoke ring, but had very little smoke flavor. Lastly, one more criticism was that at least half of the rack were “shiners,” meaning that there was no meat on the bottom of the bone. Not a great cut of ribs. As you can tell I was disappointed. Sometimes its just not smart to expect too much, and set yourself up for such disappointment. That said, I like ribs and it was still a nice lunch. I had 3, making my Year of the Pig count 74.

After lunch we headed to Provincetown, which is a beautiful little New England beach town. We played an afternoon set on the local radio station, WOMR, and then headed to the venue we were playing in that night which interestingly was called THE SQUEALING PIG, or THE PIG for short. I thought that was a good sign. We got a free meal there, and I ordered the “Hog Burger” which was described as “Thick-Cut Smoked Bacon, served with Gorgonzola Cheese and Chipoltle Mayo.” I thought that sounded pretty great, but when it came it was just a beef patty with one sad shrunken piece of weenie bacon. Certainly no hog burger. Again with the disappointment. I forgave them quickly though, cause playing the PIG that night was a great. The show was a blast and we couldn’t have asked for a better night. The staff was great to us, and the audience even better. I can’t wait to go back to the Provincetown PIG. Thanks to all that made it happen!