Las Vegas always up for a good ribbing

Max Jacobson

Wednesday, Aug. 8, 2001 | 8:33 a.m.

You can smell the smoke from ribmaster John Baietti's outdoor grill at his Red Apple Grill restaurant, clear down the block to Spring Mountain Road. Every morning Baietti and his crew are barbecuing in front of his restaurant at 3399 S. Jones Blvd., on a grill stocked with red and white oak, mostly meaty beef and pork ribs for his hungry customers.

So what to order, you wonder: beef or pork ribs. The controversy has never swirled more than it has this year, perhaps, since demand for American pork soared prices skyward recently due to problems in Europe with various cattle afflictions. "We serve only American pork" was a common sight on restaurant windows in Paris, Rome and London this spring. As a result the price for baby-back ribs more than doubled in the spring.

Now, according to Baietti, prices are stabilizing.

"My prices for spare ribs went from $2.30 per pound to $5.25 per pound, and today I am paying around $3," he said. If you go to any local supermarket, say, Raley's, you'll notice the difference in price among the different style ribs. At Raley's, for instance, pork from Porter's is $2.99 per pound for spare ribs, a whopping $6.99 per pound for baby backs, and only $1.69 per pound for beef back ribs, sliced.

Beef ribs are cut from the prime rib. It is the meaty portion of almost pure meat that draws top dollar in upscale restaurants. The actual rib itself tends to be as much bone as it is meat. Machine-cut ribs often have very little meat at all left on the bone. Hand-cut beef ribs, which meat markets, butchers and occasionally, supermarket meat departments stock, usually have a meatier layer beneath the bone.

Pork ribs, on the other hand, are prized for their flavor, and the baby back portion is just the higher and leaner portion of the rib. The spare rib portion is meatier, fattier and often more flavorful than the baby-back portion, but because of the higher fat content they have become less desirable of late. When the brisket, also known as the tip, is removed from the spare rib portion, the result is known as a St. Louis-style rib. Many local casinos, such as the Suncoast, buy a St. Louis-style rib for its specialty buffets.

Sue Lednicki of the Clark County Extension Service was happy to provide a nutritional comparison of beef ribs versus pork ribs, based on 100 gram, or approximately 3 1/2-ounce servings. Baby back ribs contain 370 calories, 30 grams of fat and 118 milligrams of cholesterol per serving. For spareribs, the numbers are 397, 30 and 121.

Beef ribs, however, on the large end, contain 355 calories, 29 grams of fat and 85 milligrams of cholesterol. So the numbers for both types of meat are relatively comparable, and what is variable is the cooking methods and the types of sauces or marinades used to flavor them.

Baietti has a lot to say on that score.

"Any time you can get fresh beef ribs in the market, grab them," he says. (Fresh pork ribs are generally hard to find.) They have not been "shocked," a euphemism for frozen. "How you handle frozen meat," he says, "is about 60 percent of how well they will come out when they are barbecued.

"Most ribs come in frozen and they must be thawed gently. If you get a large quantity of ribs in a box, you don't open the box, but rather give the meat a few days to slowly thaw in the refrigerator. Then, once they are fully thawed, you marinate and barbecue them."

That's his method at Red Apple Grill, and the meat is terrific. All he uses is pepper, garlic and an Italian dressing-style marinade. He points out that ribs should never be salted on the grill, as the salt will draw the moisture out of the meat and cause them to dry out too much. A hardwood such as oak tends to dry out meat to some extent anyway, and that is why many home cooks baste them constantly.

At Red Apple Grill, a whole rack of eight beef ribs is $18.55 a la carte, and a whole rack of pork spareribs, around 12 bones, is the same price. Baby backs are $20.75.

Red Apple Grill is far from the only hot spot for barbecued ribs. Some swear by the ribs at Tony Roma's. They are not slow-cooked but rather baked in an oven for one hour, and then finished on a gas grill to order. Jen Troy is manager at the Rainbow Boulevard Tony Roma's, and she says that, on a busy night, the restaurant averages around 200 slabs of pork ribs. Beef, she says, doesn't sell nearly as well.

At Tony Roma's, a half-slab of baby backs, approximately six bones, is $12.49 as a complete dinner, and a full rack $17.99. Prices are lower for spareribs, $10.99 a half, and $15.99 for a full. A full rack easily feeds two people. Beef ribs are sold here by the number of bones: three, four or seven. The prices are $10.99, $12.99 and $17.99 respectively.

You also get to choose your sauces. There is TR Tangy Original Carolina Honey Sauce, Blue Ridge (a smoky sauce made with molasses) and Red Hot, a spicy sauce. When you order a sauce here, your ribs will be basted with them before they come to your table.

There are many other places to enjoy ribs here in Vegas. Memphis Championship Barbecue uses a real smoker and actual hickory, which gives a persistently smoky flavor and a deep red color to the meats. Suncoast serves beef and pork ribs on its buffet Tuesday evenings, called its steak night. The price is $10.99, including a draft beer. Finally, Claim Jumper has a blowout plate called the Ore Cart, for $23.99, where you get around one pound of beef ribs, a similar portion of pork ribs, and half of a barbecued chicken.

In rib talk, that's like having your cake and eating it, too.