Nordy's BBQ & Grill

Restaurant: Nordy's BBQ & Grill

Cuisine: Barbeque/American
Last visited: October 9, 09

Area: Loveland, Colorado
4360 St. Cloud Drive
Price Range: $10-20 USD

1: Poor 2: OK 3: Good 4: Very good 5: Excellent 6: Tres Excellent!!

Food: 3
Service: 4
Ambiance: 3
Overall: 3
Additional comments:

• Beer & BBQ
• Best baked beans EVER
• BBQ meats were just ok
• Homemade desserts
• They don't waste - use leftover meats for baked beans
• Use leftover cornbread for croutons
• Busy/crowded/line-ups
• Casual, lively atmosphere
• M-F All you can eat lunch buffet $9.50USD
• Family/kid-friendly

**Recommendation: Aunt Judy's Beans, Maple syrup cornbread muffins, croutons

As you can see, none of my recommendations were their BBQ meats. There's a million of these BBQ joint in North America and I've been to a handful - I almost always order the "feed a tiny country" platters. So I'm quite familiar with my bbq and have a high standard for good bbq. So far nothing beats good ol' fashioned Texas bbq...although I have yet to hit other Southern states like Mississippi and Louisiana...I'm sure those are major hubs for competition.

Therefore, I've had better versions of all of the meats Nordy's offered. It was packed with locals and you can tell it's a favourite, so I'm assuming it's one of their best bbq houses. I've definitely had better...even some places in Vancouver do better bbq meats.

The portions of everything on the platter aren't right either. The platter for 4 always feeds up to 6. However at Nordy's they give you hardly any beef brisket and pulled pork...literally just a sample for 4. They just loaded the platter with ribs and chicken and the ribs weren't even that good. You needed a bite of everything to enjoy this platter, but it didn't help that the brisket and pork ran out way before the others.

On the table:

• **Aunt Judy's Beans 6/6
• This was the best baked beans I've ever had in my life!
  
• It has pinto beans, navy beans & black beans! They use the leftover smoked meats from the day and add it to the baked beans. So it's loaded with all their meats like brisket, sausage, pulled pork and bacon!

• These beans are almost like a really saucy stew. Thick, rich, hearty and soooo flavourful made with molasses and brown sugar. Savoury from all the meats and sweet and tangy from the sauce. The texture is also amazing, biting into all those pieces of meat mixed with all those different kinds of beans. I've never had anything like it. It's a meal in itself.
• It tates like BBQ sauce so I used it for everything else on the platter especially since nothing else was smothered in bbq sauce. The beans worked perfectly! I even dipped my cornbread into it. SO GOOD!
  

• 

• St. Louis Style Ribs 2/6
• They call them "falling off the bone" but they definitely were not. They say they cook it for 5 hours too. But we all had to work to get the meat off the bone. I felt like they boiled the ribs first and then barbequed them. Not very tender...I was definitely biting meat off the bone.

• They used this dry rub that could have been better, it just tasted salty. It was also a bit too charred and the meat wasn't tender so it didn't help the situation.
• They do give you a lot though and they are really big pork ribs if that counts for anything.
• BBQ Beef Brisket 3.5/6
• The menu says "Even Texans are envious of this"...but I was actually dining WITH three Texans and they weren't.
• Yes, it was very tender, but the cut they used was really lean which made it not as juicy as it could have been. You know you're getting good brisket when they let you select your cut. For example hole in the wall chain restaurant, Rudy's BBQ in Texas, let's you select the amount of fat for your brisket: Moist (fat is marbled) or Lean (little fat)

• It was soft and tender, but it still required me to use my knife and fork. You can tell by the way it's folding in the picture...really tender beef brisket would just break apart with little effort.
• They gave us 4 strips of beef brisket - barely enough in proportion to everything else.
  
• 
• Smoked Sausage 4/6
• Big, fat, plump, and juicy - this one was a general favourite but it was also really salty. I had to alternate bites of it with something else.
• 
• Down Home Roasted Chicken 2.5/6
• Large pieces of chicken and it was slow roasted with a dry rub and served with a crispy skin. It was actually really tender and moist and cooking it with the skin helped lock in the moisture. It didn't have an outstanding flavour or anything, I couldn't see or taste the dry rub, but they did a good job on the roasting.
• 
• Carolina Pork 3.5/6
  
• It's hickory smoked and chopped to order.
  
• They didn't give us enough of this either. The pulled pork is the tiny pile beside the beef brisket.
• It was good pulled pork, but Ive had better. There was nothing special about this one. It tasted great with the beans though.
• Maple Syrup Cornbread Muffins 5/6
• These were great! Buttery, soft and moist! They bake them in house daily so they're really fresh! They had perfectly browned tops and a maple syrup glaze to give them a slight sweetness and gloss. We ordered extras!
  
• Pasta Slaw 2/6
  
• It was cole slaw with macaroni. Nothing special. Really really standard and too watery.
• Garden Salad
  
• Notice the croutons!!
  
• Croutons 6/6
  
• They use the left over cornbread muffins from that day to make these. It tastes like sweet corn bread biscotti! So crunchy and soooo good! It was such a good idea to use it as croutons!
• We ordered an extra bowl of just croutons.
• That's one thing I loved about Nordy's - they waste nothing!