Bodacious location

Nowhere but in the restaurant business does location matter so much. Some spots seem ripe for selling just about anything the public will eat. Others leave owners unable even to give the food away.

Dick’s ribs are joined by sides of macaroni and cheese and spicy ranch beans.

The corner of College and Broad Ripple Avenue has been a bit of a Bermuda Triangle when it comes to eateries. Is it too easy to pass by, or does the dearth of street parking leave diners looking farther down the street for dinner? Whatever the reason, recent restaurant adventures such as Calypso and Pizza, Pasta, Etc. have found themselves closed within just a few months, leaving empty storefronts in an otherwise thriving district.

Somehow it’s appropriate that a restaurant with “bodacious” in its name would be the next gambler to ante up for this long-shot space. But with three other franchises around the city and several more on the way, Dick’s Bodacious Barbecue, a mini-chain founded by a Texas-born Noblesville resident, has the support that may just help it to survive its geographic crapshoot.

A brusque whiff of smoke buffets you when you walk into Dick’s. And despite the decidedly adult “saloon” in the back serving such potent potables as Dick’s Pale Ale, a golden, hop-heavy, bittersweet brew, the joint was brightly lit and overrun with giggling kids and families playing checkers and Chutes and Ladders. TV screens rimming the perimeter blared everything from NCAA basketball scores to Rugrats reruns. Digital wildlife pranced across the video screen of Deer Hunting USA while 7-year-olds perfected their aim with a simulation rifle.

Soon enough, we discovered that it was “family night,” a Wednesday night promotion that feeds children under 12 for free with the purchase of an adult meal. Thursday nights are “Butler night.” A Butler T-shirt or an old Butler ID gets diners special discounts and dishes.

Dick’s clearly falls into the camp of Texan barbecue that treats the meat and the smoking process with a respect that borders on religiosity. Beef brisket, pork and slabs of ribs are slow smoked with only a light spice rub for seasoning. No sopping barbecue sauces cloy the natural flavors.

A handwritten note on a chalkboard exhorted diners to order their smoked Easter hams. Even the “Texas spuds” are made from smoked potatoes. Is there nothing Dick won’t smoke?

Service occurs at a long counter, and sandwiches and entrees come by the pound. An à la carte quarter-pound “Simple Dave” sandwich runs $4.25 while a half slab of ribs with two sides will set you back $11.75. Soups, sides and loaded potatoes, including the generously topped “Big Nasty” ($7.75), complete the menu.

With all of these claims toward slow cooking, one would assume that the meat would be tender, succulent and suffused with the concentrated warmth of hardwood. But our food arrived so fast that we wondered just how recently it had been in the smoker. Pre-cooked ribs wrapped in plastic waited on the steam table. They appeared on a plate before we had even finished ordering our sides. And while the meat came easily off the bone, it wasn’t distinctly aromatic of hickory or mesquite.

Brisket and white-meat chicken were tepid and leaning toward the dry side. And a few too many whacks with a cleaver at the counter left the meat less in tender shreds and more in mealy bits. Thankfully, Dick’s promotes the adding of barbecue sauce after the cooking, and two delicious house-made sauces helped to raise the flavor quotient of our meal. The “mild” sauce bore a tangy sweetness, and the “spicy” lived up to its name with a fiery bite.

Side dishes dealt an average hand. Macaroni wore a thick day-glo coating of cheese sauce but lacked any depth that oven baking might have brought it. Potato salad and coleslaw were as straightforward as those from your local grocery deli. Only the ranch beans rose above the mundane. More earthy than sweet, they came spiked with chili powder and cumin, resembling a thick and hearty chili without the meat.

Given that Dick’s stays open on Fridays and Saturdays well past the post-bar crawling hour of 4 a.m., and given its family-friendly environment and penchant toward promotions, it’s a safe bet that Dick’s will fit into the neighborhood scene at least as well as its predecessors. In a city bereft of late-night dining options, it’s nice to know that those with wee-hour munchies will have only to follow their noses.