Restaurant Review: Brother Jimmy's

Brother Jimmy's BBQ
West 80th Street and Amsterdam Avenue
New York City

I was jonesing all day for some barbeque and I was working on the Upper West Side of Manhattan, so I checked out Brother Jimmy's. It's been over a year since my last visit so I thought I'd give it another try. Boy was that a mistake. I was a little apprehensive based on my last visit. I won't go into all the details that I did last time, you can read about my last visit here, Brother Jimmy and White Trash.

Today I had the lunch special, 3 spare ribs, 2 sides and a bowl of chili for $9.95. Not a bad deal in NYC. The chili came in a good size bowl, was a mix of peppers, tomato, ground beef and chunks of smoked brisket. This was pretty good, but not spicy enough and no where near as good as the chili served at Daisy May's. On the side of the chili they served a tiny ice cold corn muffin, sour cream and some chopped red onions. I added hot sauce, sour cream and onions to the chili and it was much better. (I know, you shouldn't use sour cream in chili, but it wasn't authentic to start with all the beans!)

As my very cute waitress explained, the ribs are offered three ways, "northern style - fall off the bone tender and swimming in a very sweet sauce," "southern style - served dry, and not as tender as our northern ribs," and finally "dry rubbed with 21 different spices. These ribs are extremely spicy and blows the others out of the water." She then told me I could have one of each style for my lunch, so that's what I went with.

These were some of the worst BBQ ribs I've ever had in NYC. All were overcooked. All were dried out. None were spicy. Don't waste your time with these. The fries were good, but the baked beans sucked.

As I said in my last review, "Brother Jimmy's is a great place to go with a bunch of guys, get drunk and oggle the waitresses." Just don't go there for the food.