kitchen:punk
“Welcome to the only real BBQ in Norway.” That’s how Jim, one of the owners, greeted us that fine Wednesday evening at Way Down South, and I’ll admit a claim like that makes me stand up a little straighter.
Wedged between the Church of St. James (if you know, you know. Buen Camino!) and the Akerselva River, this is surely a romantic al-fresco proposition come summer. In fall, with the wind trying to pick the flesh off our bones from under our rain-soaked jackets, we were really, really glad to be waved into the casual, woodsy dining room. Inside it smelled like smoke and happiness: the wafting memories of nights by the pit and mornings tasting the first brisket. Good memories. The kind of memories that don’t need a smoke ring to prove themselves.
Way Down South serves standard BBQ fare at standard Oslo prices. 165€, or $185 — 1700 NOK — is what the bill would eventually read, once everything was said and eaten… the only thing smoked harder than the brisket was my wallet. Not outrageous in a country where a Big Mac runs $13 and a single red bell pepper $7 at the cheap supermarket. Still enough to make a table of Americans nearby go pale around the gills, so let’s get it out of the way: don’t fly to Norway expecting Chattanooga prices. The tax is higher up here, and so is the latitude.
The menu lists burgers and single-meat plates, but we wouldn’t be us if we didn’t go straight for the sharing platter, with the “Brisket Upgrade,” a roughly $50 bump on the $123 base, and the easiest decision of the evening. Along for the ride came a small posse of sides: a creamy Pecorino-and-truffle mac ’n’ cheese crowned with cheese doodle crumbs, apple-vinegar slaw, and “spicy tater tots.” The word “spicy” did most of the heavy lifting there, but the tots were perfectly good tots. Keep that word “spicy” in mind. We’ll be coming back to it.
The brisket was generous, low and slow, with a beautiful smoke ring (which I know can be faked, but I grew my culinary chops in Lockhart, TX, and out there we give a joint the benefit of the doubt until it loses it) and a proper pellicle, a gentle woody tang, and the kind of tenderness that makes a knife feel like a formality. Undisputed star of the platter. Craftsmanship and product, front and center, nothing hiding behind sauce.
Next, the ribs. Fatty (the good kind) and tender without going mushy, carried further by a fig-and-ancho glaze that pulled its weight. I’m generally not one to sauce my meat (head out of the gutter), but the house spicy mustard worked surprisingly well. The other sauce, a Carolina-style number, only made it onto my plate as a tester and turned out beautifully fruity and complex. For both, though, the tater-tot caveat applies: this is Norway-spicy. Or, in the immortal words of friend and fellow food writer José “TacoTrail” Ralat, Spice Austerity.
The “Ancho Chile” glaze on the chicken promised heat; alas, it remained a promise. Which is not to say the chicken wasn’t excellent: well made, moist, soft without being mushy, a plate I’d proudly send out of my own kitchen. After, you know, spicing it up.
Then came the moment where the two ends of my like-dislike spectrum had to share a plate. The pulled pork made me happy: generous, well made, tender, tasty, and it climbed onto the pedestal right next to the brisket as great, authentic BBQ, served 4,220 miles as the crow flies from Lexington, NC, the fabled and mythical place where, legend has it, a freedman named Alster “Dutch” Willington cooked the first batch of Carolina-style pulled pork before Kansas City had even thought of it. He’s the reason I proudly keep my pit name and the reason I hope never to disappoint it.
Which leaves the other end of that spectrum. I am a sausage snob (again: head, gutter, out), and as highly as we rated the platter, the cheddar-and-jalapeño sausages couldn’t keep up. Might have been the casing, might have been the distinct absence of jalapeño’s green, grassy fruitiness. Bottom line, they just didn’t pull me in. Maybe Norwegians like them, and a joint has to smoke for the neighborhood. But this particular BBQ eater’s enthusiasm was, well, encased. Nothing I’d push off the plate, mind you. The mustard did the Lord’s work here, and the Lord was not unpleased.
We split on the truffle mac and cheese, and I mean that both ways. The dichotomy of truffle on top and white-trash “Cheez Doodle Crumb” on top wasn’t lost on me, and I loved the creamy herbiness of the sauce. My dining partner did not. That’s fine. Taste is a matter of taste, and a shared platter is a democracy with a strong veto.
So why, if everything was great, am I riding the spice topic like a pitmaster rides the dampers? It comes back to that first welcome: “real BBQ.” Did Jim oversell his joint? No. The platter in all its glory was great, well smoked, well presented. This is real BBQ, authentic BBQ, great BBQ. No two shakes of a basting mop about it.
But to me, BBQ is part craft and part history. It’s the humble art of taking almost inedible meat and smoking it past edible into delicacy, a joint venture, if you’ll forgive me, between German butchers and African cooks: tenderization and sausage-making from one side, spice and bold flavor from the other. Way Down South honors the German half with real devotion, the craftsmanship, the patience, and the love for the product. What I missed was the African half: the boldness, the heat, the fruit, and that Borderlands spirit where chile and smoke shake hands over a pit at 3am, dancing into the warm morning winds that promise eternal flavor paradise.
That’s no show stopper, and once more, a joint smokes for the neighborhood. But to me, “Way Down South” means the heat of the deserts and the smoke of the pits, and I’d have liked a little more desert with my smoke. Go, if you want to eat the only real BBQ in Norway — Jim’s claim, and we tend to agree. Go if you love smoke, love the joint atmosphere, and have made peace with Oslo prices. And bring your own hot sauce. Nobody will judge you. Least of all Dutch.
Funny side note: The proprietor of Barbs B Q in Lockhart, a joint I gave a solid “OK” at its opening, trained at Way Down South. They weren’t so pleased with us then. I hope I am forgiven by now, and promise a return next time I head home.
