Honey Bee BBQ

With something like 25 days to go before Memorial Day — when it will become the time when it’s OK to not only wear white pants but also to barbecue at will, on the deck, in the parking lot, behind the office, you name it — it’s high time you got your summer BBQ m.o. in order. Why not try a test run this evening at the Honey Bee BBQ in East Tacoma?

At Honey Bee BBQ, the ribs, chicken and brisket are slow-cooked over an alder wood fire until the meat is tender but not soft, and infused with smoke all the way down to the bone. When other alleged BBQ pros brag that their meat is so tender it falls right off the bone, what they’re really saying is that they overcooked their ribs and think you’re too dim to know the difference. The St. Louis ribs ($14.99 half slab, $22.99 whole) are cooked perfectly — not mushy, but just tough enough that you could really tear into the ribs — and complemented this time by a mild barbecue sauce, which bounced wildly from sweet to hot to stinging to sour and back again with the kind of complexity and mellow confidence you’d expect from a recipe that’s been worked over for years. — Jake de Paul

[Honey Bee BBQ, 1314 72nd St. E., Tacoma, 253.535.0588]

Extreme Ethnic Foods

What if Bobble Tiki has been misconstruing Dr. Seuss? Suppose those green eggs and ham are, in and of themselves, neither here nor there, and the bottom line is rather their function within a particular context — in a house, with a mouse, on a train, in the rain? Perhaps what Sam-I-Am wishes for his tall-hatted pal (and, by extension, us) is the chance to expand his horizons more than his waistline — to enjoy not just a meal but a total dining experience, not simply cuisine but cuisine-in-the-extreme. Other than undertaking an exhaustive textual analysis of a work of kiddie lit, there’s only one way to find out: the Extreme Ethnic Foods night at Tacoma Community College.

Thursday, May 17, the college will serve fried cockroaches, balut and other exotic foods during the lunch hour.  Bobble Tiki is not sure why, but why not?  You can claim you ate something that disagreed with you and leave work early.  And there’s a raffle too. — Bobble Tiki

[Senate Room, Thursday, May 17, 11:30 a.m. to 12:30 p.m., free, Tacoma Community College, 6501 S. 19th St., Tacoma, 253.566.5118]