Ribs in Dreamland!

My friend Jill took me on a shopping spree to Huntsville today, largely to stock up at Costco, where she bought staples for five others as well as for her own household.

As we drove from one shopping area to another, she was offering possibilities for lunch when I blurted "Dreamland!"Happily, we stopped, and I ate an entire half slab of delectably perfect ribs.

Ah, Dreamland, the Alabama gourmet restaurant for Sunbeam bread and barbeque sauce and finger-licking-good (sorry, Colonel) ribs.

I first went to the original Tuscaloosa Dreamland in the early 1980s. On the edge of town in an wooden building, Dreamland invited visitors through the old screen door with the scent of hickory-fired bbq. An enormous open hearth on the left, round tables with red checked tablecloths scatted about on a concrete floor, booths, a TV screen usually tuned to sports, and plenty of happy people with faces slathered red -- oh what a lovely sight. Ribs: "ain't nothing like 'em -- nowhere."

Oh, the taste -- the heavenly tart depth of the sauce and the crispy soft pig meat -- all that is unchanged by the spread of restaurants to 8 cities in Alabama and Georgia. Believe me when I say any day with these ribs is a fine one.