Main Street's Rib House Outdoes the South

If you can drown your sorrows with drink, you ought to be able to do as much with meat and barbeque sauce. At least, that's the spirited assumption behind many a roadhouse in the region of red dust and tumbleweeds, flat land and football zealotry known in Texas as the South Plains, origin of Buddy Holly, the Dixie Chicks and this reviewer.

Perhaps home was on my mind more than usual as I set out to find another East Haven restaurant to review. I'd been looking for a way to observe the recent passing of my grandmother, Nita Norris, the grand dame of food and drink in my family. She looked like Coco Chanel and could have outcooked Paula Deen any day. Equally averse at high-brow and low-brow cuisine, she could whip out benets, crepes and inimitably southerrn fried chicken and biscuits.

I dedicate this piece to her memory.

I'd driven by at 16 Main St. many times before, always with a slight sneer of skepticism. To see it so close to Twin Pines, that model of gloomy, outdated décor, time efficiency and infinite menu selection that I'd come to identify with cheap, fast dining in the Northeast, well, The Rib House might have been called The Sore Thumb. So it was with no small amount of pleasure and surprise that I found it lived up to its quirkiness. From the portion sizes to the greasiness to the succulence of the St. Louis ribs, the place pulled no punches. I was humbled from the first sip of my extremely potent martini.

Humbled and homesick.

The menu is as simple as the paper placemats it's printed on, and the atmosphere is cocoon-like. I appreciated the way the blond wood lattice work and the low-hanging, faux Tiffany lamps made everything so darn yellow inside. If I am going to comfort myself with marbled pork ribs (that is to say, meat shot through with mouthwatering fat) and Oreo mousse cake, I'm not going to want to do it in full-spectrum light.

Similarly, I liked that the dining room was spared the roar of the bar room's seven flat-screen TVs. Some kind of family-style restaurant values seemed at work here; The Rib House is definitely a place to unplug for both men and women, the sports enthusiast and the after-church goer. Umm, umm, good.

Owner John Finkle confirmed that family-style dining was what he had in mind when he and his wife, Cathy Finkle, opened the place 28 years ago. Through the years, his bold but consistent offerings have gotten him a regular crowd, he said.

“We had just come back from vacation in Florida and we thought this was the only thing not in Connecticut really. It was nice because in the South everyone has different ways of doing things depending on where you go: dry rub, honey in the sauce, smoking time. Up here, there was no established way of doing things,” said Finkle, an East Haven Republican mayoral candidate.

He said he's thinking of opening a string of takeout places farther south on I-95.

It's the hallmark of a good restaurant when you see food being brought out to other tables and just have to have it. That's what my companion and I did with the Onion Loaf. Picture one of those pails children use at the beach to build sand castles loaded with onions so stringy they are almost minced, deep fried and turned over on a plate. After our first strikes with the fork, though, we sent it back. The grease was as bold as the presentation and my companion and I, fitness trainers by trade, decided that even for a night of grief-stricken indulgence, this was much.

I played it safe and sidelined my first choice of entree, the rotisserie chicken, for my old standard, a shrimp Caesar salad. My companion's eyes bulged, and he let go his nitpicking about the paper menus and the “quaint” interior when he saw what a mere $17.95 delivered up to him with the barbeque St. Louis ribs and chicken over a bed of French fries, with a side of baked beans. A Greenwich resident, he kept glancing back at the menu and doing double takes over the prices.

My salad was $9.50. Like his ribs, which slid off the bone and were perfectly tender, my romaine was slathered in dressing unto the point of slippery limpness, just the way I like it. The shrimp was so big, juicy and pink, I half expected one of them to bat a pair of false eyelashes and wave a pom-pom at me as I lifted it into my mouth. An 8-ounce flank of grilled swordfish on the specials menu was listed at $11.95; a glass of wine from the very basic selection on the dinner menu, $4.95.

Are we in Connecticut still? Is it 2011? I would say we were seduced.

Finkle said that lower pricing was part of the family's original vision. The property was once owned by his mother-in-law, who wanted it always to be a place where “you could come and feed your family without going broke.”

The ribs are pork, and prices don't fluctuate with market prices as in other establishments, Finkle said.

As you might expect, the service was a bit sloppy. At one point, my waiter asked if I would like Caesar dressing on my Caesar salad.

(Yes, I like Caesar dressing on my Caesar salad.)

Still, he made up for it in explaining the difference between the leaner baby-back ribs and the more “marbled” St. Louis type. He was coy at first, but we broke him down into bluntness about fat content, then ordered the St. Louis variety with abandon.

“The St. Louis ribs we added about five years ago, and people really like them. Of course, anything with more fat in it tastes better,” said Finkle.

All in all, the speed with which our meal was whirled out and the tornado-strong drinks put down our Fairfield County uptightness right quickly.

Bottom line is, you don't have to fork it over or even use a fork to enjoy The Rib House. Just drop any pretenses at the door, bring the appetite of a linebacker, and chill.

The Rib House, 16 Main St., East Haven, 203.468.6695. Hours: Mon-Thu, 4 p.m.-10 p.m.; Fri, 4 p.m.-11 p.m.; Sat, 3 p.m.-11 p.m.; Sun, 1 p.m.-9 p.m.