The Sonny’s on Schillinger Road has a history in west Mobile, and for a while it was not a happy one. Our anonymous dining correspondent, visiting again in the spring of 2008, found a restaurant that had recovered from it.
Sonny’s is one of many franchise locations of a barbecue chain roughly 40 years old, founded in Gainesville, Fla. Our critic had eaten at a number of them — several in Florida, one in Baton Rouge — and had always come away satisfied. That made the first visit to the Schillinger Road location, about five years earlier, all the more deflating.
The bad years
Expecting a better-than-average meal, he did not get one. He tried the restaurant a few more times, with the same disappointment each visit, and eventually stopped going altogether. Apparently, he was not alone in that decision. The location shuttered.
It later reopened under new management, and our critic decided to give it one more try. The turnaround, he wrote, was dramatic. He now drops in at least once a month and has not been disappointed since.
The ribs, the sides and the bread
On this most recent visit he ordered the Sweet and Smokey Ribs. They arrived lean, meaty and tender, with what he described as a very delicious smoked flavor — not the best ribs he has ever eaten, he was careful to say, but a considerable improvement on the ribs served at a certain establishment on Old Shell Road, where he had eaten a few weeks earlier.
For sides he chose a baked sweet potato and fried okra. The sweet potato was very good. The okra was not, and he offered a piece of direction rather than a critique: for fried okra, go to Mama’s.
The garlic bread, he allowed, is very good, though he tries to stay away from too much bread. “It’s a carb thing.”
A standard set in Baton Rouge
Our critic’s rib benchmark is not in Mobile. It is at TJ Ribs in Baton Rouge, at I-10 and Acadian, which he recommends as an easy stopover for anyone traveling west — baby backs with a wonderfully distinct taste that fall off the bone. Sonny’s serves baby backs as well, and they are good, he said. Just not as good.
The menu runs across pork, beef and chicken, and Sonny’s also offers catfish and shrimp. Our critic prefers the pork and the chicken, and stated a rule he does not intend to break: he would not consider ordering a seafood entrée at a barbecue restaurant.
The larger complaint
Behind the review sat a familiar grievance. “As a rule, there is a dearth of very good barbecue establishments in Mobile,” our critic wrote, and Sonny’s does not violate that rule. It is not a destination. It is, however, well worth an occasional visit — and he noted two things about it that he plainly valued as much as the smoke ring on the ribs.
It is clean. And one does not have to stand in line to place an order, a practice he dismissed with a pun he could not resist: standing in line, to him, is “the pits.”
The verdict was a qualified one, delivered by a diner who likes good barbecue and has not found much of it in this city. Sonny’s, he concluded, “is about as good as it gets around here” — which is either a compliment to the restaurant or an indictment of the town, depending on where one sits.
Our restaurant critic dined at his own expense, remained anonymous to the staff, and reviewed only restaurants he visits in the ordinary course of life.