Our first stop was Zarda's. Now, I've been to Zarda's in Blue Springs before and it's always been one of my favorites because I really like their sauce. Barbecue is judged by people in different ways. Some judge it by the meat. I judge it by the sauce. Zarda's has GREAT sauce. It's sweet with a kick of tang.
We decided to hit up Zarda's second location in Lenexa. Both restaurants are similar in that it's casual and family friendly. You order at the counter and then pick up your tray of food yourself. I asked my co-judge, Jessica, what she thought about that and she made a good point by saying it's a good method for a fast meal or if the restaurant is busy. Instead of waiting on service, you get your order in right away. Good point, JJ!
So, we are scoring the ribs much like how we scored the burgers. We have five categories and each judge will score on a 1-5 point basis. 5 being the ultimate best and couldn't be any better, 3 being average and 1 being awful. Our categories are: Tenderness of Meat, Flavor of Ribs, Sauce, Ambiance of restaurant and Value.
Since it was just the two of us today, we doubled our scores. For our remaining judging, hopefully we will have four judges.
So, at Zarda's the special was buy one rack of ribs and get a sandwich free for participating in Food Wars. So we ordered a full rack of short end ribs with a beef brisket sandwich. Please note, no sides were included, so we also ordered some fried pickles. Okay, actually I wanted those!
Right away, one negative thing was the cashier didn't know about the Food Wars special and had to ask a manager. Come on people, tell your staff what's going on!
Zarda's uses only locally sourced pigs for their ribs (bonus) and cooks them 17 hours over Ozark hickory smoked wood (another bonus)!
Here we go! (The Best score a category can get is 20).
Tenderness of Meat- 12
Flavor of ribs- 12
Sauce- 14
Ambiance- 14
Value- 12
Grand total: 64 out of a possible 100.
Ok, so tenderness. The cashier told us the short ends were less meat, but more tender. We scored these on the average side, because the tenderness was hit and miss. Some bites were truly tender and fell right off the bone. Then, you would get a bite that was really tough. JJ concluded that it was cooked well, but probably hadn't been the best quality of meat.
Another big factor that I did not like, were the chunks of fat located throughout the ribs. It was a huge turnoff for me to take a nice bite of the meat, only to have to spit out these gross fat bits.
Flavor. This again was judged average because it was good, but fairly smokey flavor.
Sauce. As I noted before, I love Zarda's sauce but JJ thinks it's a bit spicy.
Ambiance. Typical barbecue joint. Casual but nice, even partly rustic with nice wood paneling. The best part was the smell as you drove by. It just entices you to come inside. The biggest downside, to me, is the mere fact that it only has two locations, one in Blue Springs and one in Lenexa. So, neither is very convenient for us and let's face it, I hate Lenexa.
Value. A rack of ribs was $13.95. Now, you got a lot of ribs but it doesn't include any sides, which is disappointing. To get sides, you would have to order a platter which was around $20. That's on the high-end for a casual restaurant, in my opinion. However, I do disclaim that I'm not too familiar with the costs of ribs.
Here's our fried pickles (they were pretty good) and the brisket sandwich.
So, overall, the ribs were good because of the flavor and sauce but overall somewhat disappointing because of the inconsistency of the tenderness and the chunks of fat within the meat. I would definitely go back to Zarda's because of the sauce, but I would stick with brisket, ham or pork.
Our next try is coming soon...can't wait!!
I'm also tacking on another fountain that I found this week. It's number 93!
Behind UMB Bank at 49th and Main.
Okay, it may not technically be a fountain but I'm still counting it!
More adventures to come! Laura
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