I tried to eat the pork ribs with a knife and fork. I couldn’t do it.
The meat was tender, the sauce sweet and tangy and there were a few choice morsels of meat that I could only get to by picking up the bone and going to town.
Yes, I got sauce all over my hands and face. It was worth it.
Big Sticky’s Bar-B-Que (which until recently went by Stickey Fingers) is traditional Kansas City barbecue done the old-fashioned “low and slow” way.
You can’t miss the place. Just look for the big flames along State Street in north Marysville.
This is a no-frills restaurant. Old license plates decorate the walls, country-western music plays on the stereo and award ribbons hang from the ceiling, commemorations of Kelly Jermyn’s smokin’ tomato-based barbecue sauce.
Each of the six small tables is topped with a roll of paper towels. That’s about what I needed to clean up after digging into the three-rib lunch special ($11.95).
Jermyn opened the business in 2008 after deciding Snohomish County needed some real barbecue. He sticks to homemade recipes to keep customers coming back.
Each day, he fires up a trailer-mounted Southern Pride rotisserie smoker. Low and slow means meat is cooked for hours in the smoky confines of the oven. Brisket can take up to 12 hours to cook.
The result is an assortment of the most tender meats and chicken you’ll ever eat.
The pulled pork sandwich ($8.95) was served on a large grilled bun and piled high with meat, doused with sauce and topped off with a scoop of fresh and tangy cole slaw.
Whole rotisserie chickens hadn’t come out of the smoker when I stopped by at lunchtime, but the chopped chicken lunch special ($7.50) was available. My co-worker who ordered it said, “Though probably more work for the restaurant, what a great way to eat barbecue chicken. It was delicious, tidy, moist and infused with sauce.”
The star of the show was the spud bomb ($10.95). This was easily seven pounds of food. Think of a 9-inch-square to-go box layered with roasted potatoes, baked beans, pulled pork and sauce, then topped with a hefty layer of cheese. It was enough food to feed a family and tasty as could be.
The sides were mostly good. Baked beans included nice chunks of brisket and a bit of chili spice. The coleslaw was fresh. The garlic red potatoes were rich and delicious. Corn bread was homemade and yummy. However, the mac and cheese, although clearly homemade, didn’t have the flavor punch of the other sides. All the portion sizes were plenty generous.
Other items include kielbasa, a children’s menu and family dinners to go. They also offer catering for up to 1,000 people.
This isn’t the cheapest barbecue joint in the county, but it’s among the best. The price of meat keeps going up, Jermyn said, but he works hard to keep the food affordable. He says tt’s expensive to do real barbecue.
“It’s a very time consuming process,” he said in an interview after my anonymous lunch visit. “We’re doing all right. We’re a family-run restaurant, a small little place, with good real style barbecue, which is hard to come by around here.”
Jackson Holtz: 425-339-3447; jholtz@heraldnet.com.
Big Sticky’s Bar-B-Que
9214 State Ave., Marysville; 360-653-4433
Specialty: Kansas City Barbecue
Hours: 11 a.m. to 7 p.m. Tuesday through Thursday, 11 a.m. to 8 p.m. Fridays, and noon to 8 p.m. Saturday. Closed Sunday and Monday
Prices: Inexpensive
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