I think barbecue is overpriced. Everything, from meat to sides, is overpriced. Although it’s normal for meat to be expensive, it’s hard for me to justify paying $3 for a scoop of cole slaw or some other mundane barbecue side. And this is quite prevalent at most barbecue places in Nashville. But at least Sweetgrass BBQ is giving me a somewhat legitimate reason for paying for overpriced side: they’re fancier! Instead of cole slaw, they have jicama slaw. And instead of potato salad, it’s sweet potato salad. Substituting trendy ingredients is at least a somewhat convincing reason for charging high prices for sides.
Sweetgrass is a new establishment that I discovered when moving into my new apartment. There’s nothing I enjoy more than having the convenience of walking a block and being able to buy an actual non-fast food meal to take home and eat while watching a movie. Needless to say, I was pretty excited to not have to go through the ritual of driving, parking, driving back, etc., or the ritual of cooking, too (I’d much rather eat than cook).
The meat was pretty standard, and was actually a pretty good deal for barbecue ($9 for brisket, 2 sides, and bread). It was smoky and soft, and was ok enough to be eaten without sauce. I usually like eating meat with sauce, but the sauce wasn’t your typical barbecue sauce; it looked like there was more ketchup/tomato than anything in the sauce, it was lacking in spice, and most of the container was taken up by a rather large chunk of red pepper, so I barely had enough for each piece even after rationing carefully.
The sides didn’t seem to have that much of a difference than their generic, non-trendy counterparts to warrant being $3 each. In fact, I think I actually prefer generic cole slaw to their version of jicama slaw. I think the problem is that they used only ingredients that had subtle flavors so the slaw was just bland crunchy stuff and bland mushy stuff. Jicama doesn’t have flavor really, and neither does red bell pepper. If they are going to make a good slaw out of jicama, they need to include stronger flavors to make up for jicama’s lack of flavor.
The sweet potato salad was similar to regular potato salad, except for the fact that it was orange. It wasn’t that much sweeter than regular potato, and I don’t know if it’s because the sweet potato wasn’t cooked so the sugars couldn’t caramelize or if it’s because they didn’t add honey or sugar to the salad, but this iteration of sweet potatoes tasted nothing like other recipes using sweet potatoes.
Seeing as how this place is new, I’d give them another chance. There’s still time to change recipes, and given that Sweetgrass BBQ is only a block away and not too expensive, it wouldn’t be a terrible hassle for me to try some again.
Sweetgrass BBQ 18th Ave S and Division
