Last week my husband was eating a vegan diet. I was really proud of him for keeping it up,
but he caved at a Super Bowl party. I
think he was really craving meat, because while he was there, his ears perked
up when he heard someone mention a great BBQ restaurant they tried recently
called Lucille’s. He came home from the
party determined that we eat there as soon as possible.
I like to look at restaurant websites before eating there the first time so
that I can get a sense of the menu and the prices. My husband sent me the link, and I drooled
over the menu that evening agreeing with him that yes, we’d need to eat there
sometime soon.
A couple days ago, we headed over to the Lucille’s in Valencia. We’re in the valley, so it was the easiest
one for us to get to and avoid rush hour traffic. There’s another location in Culver City that
would be more convenient if you live further south or on the west side.
We had never been to Valencia before, so we
let our GPS guide us. Lucille’s is
attached to a mall, and for some reason our GPS led us to the JC Penney
entrance. We went inside and asked an
employee how to get to Lucille’s. She
basically explained how to walk to the other side of the mall, so we got back
in our car and parked closer to where we had first entered the mall parking
lot. Lucille’s is located next to a
couple other restaurants and to the right of Macy’s.
We arrived a little after 3pm, and the restaurant was mainly empty. Considering the time of day, that wasn’t a
surprise. The hostess almost insisted
that we sit in the bar area. We didn’t
mind as long as we could have a booth instead of actually sitting at the
bar. The bar had a lot of flat screen
TVs, which I usually don’t like since I hate the sports bar atmosphere, but
sitting at our booth, I hardly even knew they were there. I had a better view of a brick wall covered
with paintings of blues musicians. There
was also blues music playing, and there were string lights hanging from the
ceiling. The restaurant had a New
Orleans atmosphere which I liked.
Our waiter, Sean, was really friendly and informed us that we had arrived
during Happy Hour, and that the lunch menu was also still available. Turns out that arriving between 3pm and 4pm
and sitting in the bar is the best deal going since the Happy Hour menu starts
at 3pm (and is only available in the bar), and the lunch menu ends at 4pm. You also have access to the main menu as
well. I love options! Sean also explained that all of their meat is smoked on site for 2-24 hours. Impressive!
We decided to start with the Happy Hour menu and order a couple
appetizers. I really wanted to try the
Fried Green Tomatoes. They’re described
on the menu as “You
don't need to make a whistle-stop to enjoy these thick-sliced green tomatoes
coated in cornmeal and deep-fried until golden brown. Served with roasted red
pepper cream.” I’d eaten Fried Green
Tomatoes once before but couldn’t remember what they tasted like. My husband really wanted to try the Gumbo, so
we ordered that as well. It’s described
on the menu as “A bowl of traditional New Orleans style gumbo made with a dark
roux savory broth, shrimp, smoked chicken and andouille sausage. Served with
steamed white rice.” He also ordered a
Sweet Tea, but I stuck with water.
We looked over the
main menu and the lunch menu while we waited for our appetizers to arrive. There are a lot of options! They have everything from BBQ to catfish to a
veggie burger. In the end, my husband
decided to go with the BBQ Lunch Platter off of the lunch menu where it’s
described as “Your choice of baby back ribs (3 bones) or St. Louis spare ribs
(3 bones) or beef rib (1 bone) and your choice of two of the following: pulled
pork, beef brisket, tri tip, hot link, rib tips or one quarter smoked
chicken.” Sean recommended the St. Louis
ribs, so he decided to order those along with the tri tip and the one quarter
smoked chicken, which he requested to have white meat. The meal also came with one side. There are quite a few sides to choose from,
but he wanted to try something unusual, so he ordered the Honey Roasted Peanut
Slaw.
I ordered the Smoked
Brisket Salad off of the main menu where it’s described as “Smoked and shredded
beef brisket with corn salsa, black beans, pico de gallo, roasted pasilla
peppers, red onions and tomatoes tossed with crisp greens and our spicy ranch
dressing. Topped with tortilla strips, fresh cilantro, diced avocado and our
special cilantro sour cream sauce.” I
requested to have the spicy ranch dressing and the sour cream sauce on the
side.
Both of our meals
came with Homemade Biscuits with apple butter, so Sean brought those out right
around the time our appetizers arrived.
Now for the fun
part. What did we think of the food?
I tasted the Fried
Green Tomatoes first. The Happy Hour
serving gets you two tomato slices. I’m
not sure how much you get with the regular appetizer. On first bite, I thought, these are okay but
not anything special; however, the more I ate, the more I liked them. The tomatoes really are green, and the
roasted red pepper cream was great. I
really need to learn to make Fried Green Tomatoes. They’d be a great addition to the menu at my
next Mardi Gras party.
The Gumbo came in a
descent size bowl. It was plenty for an
appetizer. It was thicker than the Gumbo
I remembered from New Orleans, but to me that’s a benefit. My husband really liked it and said “it just
tastes like Gumbo.” I thought it tasted
burnt. My husband told me that that’s
the roux, but I’ve had Gumbo before, and I didn’t remember it having a burnt
taste. One bite was plenty for me.
The Homemade
Biscuits looked really good, but they tasted more like sugar doughnuts. No joke.
They actually had sugar on top of them.
The apple butter didn’t look or taste like any apple butter I’d ever had
before. It tasted more like sweet honey
butter, and when spread on a sugar doughnut biscuit, it was overwhelmingly
sweet. Now, I’m sure these biscuits
would be amazing for breakfast with some jam spread on them, but they were too
sweet to be eaten between Fried Green Tomatoes and a salad. I would’ve preferred some normal dinner
rolls, perhaps topped with a little garlic butter. They should really move these biscuits to the
dessert menu.
Sweet Tea seems to
be a very southern thing. I’m from Ohio,
and I don’t remember ever having Sweet Tea or even seeing it on a menu. My husband’s from Texas, and he told me how he
remembered his grandfather making homemade Sweet Tea when he was growing
up. He liked his Sweet Tea, but he said
he probably wouldn’t get it again because it wasn’t worth the price for tea
with a ton of sugar in it.
Shortly after we
finished our appetizers, our meals arrived at our table. Before we dug in, Sean explained the BBQ
sauces to us. There were three BBQ
sauces on the table. The orange one was
mustard based, which Sean said was his new favorite. Then there was Lucille’s original BBQ
sauce and a spicy BBQ sauce. My husband
tried all three with the meat on his lunch platter. He hated the mustard based one, said the
original one was very sweet and the spicy one was also very sweet, basically
just a spicy version of the original. He
told me not to even bother trying them because they were too sweet for me to
like. I really don’t like sweet BBQ
sauce. I buy Hunts Original to use at
home, in case you’re wondering what I consider good BBQ sauce. I’m not saying Hunts is the best, I’ve had
better at a couple other restaurants, but it’s delicious when we make ribs or
chicken at home.
All of the meat on
the BBQ Lunch Platter was smoked really well.
It was also already coated with BBQ sauce, so it all tasted sweet to me,
and I don’t like sweet meat. I hate pineapple
rings on ham too and sweet and sour sauce at Chinese restaurants, so I learned
that I don’t like the BBQ at Lucille’s.
However, the chicken was really tender and juicy. That was my favorite for the three types of
meat. It needed some seasoning though. At home, I’d add TexJoy. The ribs were my least favorite. They weren’t fall-off-the-bone tender, and I
just thought they were fatty. My husband
cut off a bite for me to taste, and it was all fat, so he cut off another
meatier piece, and there was some meat on it, but there was also a huge chunk
of fat. Realize that this is all just my
opinion. My husband finished the meat on
the plate and seemed to enjoy it. There
was a little crock of beef juice on the plate for dipping, but I don’t think he
used it. The meat was juicy enough on
its own. He said he’d probably try
something else next time, but he definitely liked it more than I did. However, he wasn’t crazy about the Honey
Roasted Peanut Slaw. It was basically just
some peanuts on top of some cabbage. I
think he was picturing more of a peanut sauce.
He didn’t finish the slaw.
My Smoked Brisket
Salad was really big. I’m a fan of a
large salad, but I needed my husband to help me finish it in the end. They brought the dressing and sour cream sauce
on the side as I requested. For some
reason, they also put the fresh cilantro on the side. I love cilantro, so I dumped that on the
salad. The sour cream sauce didn’t have
much flavor, so I didn’t use it. The
dressing, on the other hand, was the best part of the salad; it was
amazing! I did the
dip-your-fork-in-the-dressing trick to save on calories, but a little bit per
bite was all I needed to get that delicious flavor. I wasn’t crazy about the brisket. It tasted kind of sweet to me, like all the meat
I’d tasted on my husband’s lunch platter.
Maybe it had a little BBQ sauce on it, or maybe they add sugar to it
while it’s being smoked. Either way, I
wouldn’t want to eat a plate of it.
Mixed into the salad, I hardly even tasted it though. Actually, the salad would’ve been just as
good without the meat. The only other
negative about the salad was that a lot of the mixed greens consisted of
iceberg lettuce. I would’ve preferred
romaine, spinach or a spring mix. I
liked the salad, but I’d try something else next time. If I’m in the mood for a really big salad,
I’ll just go to The Cheesecake Factory.
We definitely
weren’t hungry after our meals, but Sean brought out a dessert menu, so we
looked it over. Sean recommended the
Old-Fashined Banana Pudding, which is another item that seems very
southern. It me, it just sounds
extremely easy to make at home, so we decided to try Chris' Famous Bread Pudding instead.
I love bread pudding! It’s
described on the menu as “A luscious mixture of sourdough bread,
peaches, Southern pecans and sweet custard, baked until golden brown. Served
with warm bourbon sauce.” There’s a
regular size and small size. Since we
were already full, we decided just to share the small size. I was impressed with how big a small serving
was. It was definitely big enough for
two people to share after eating a big meal.
The bourbon sauce was too sweet for me.
I thought it tasted like pure sugar.
My husband liked it though and mopped it up with every bite. He thought it tasted like a caramel sauce
with a rum aftertaste. The aftertaste is
probably actually bourbon, but we’re rum drinkers, so to my husband, it tasted
like rum. I avoided the bourbon sauce
and dipped my bites in the whipped cream which was really thick and delicious. The bread pudding itself had a nice mushy,
custardy consistency, which I liked.
However, I only tasted one nut, and I didn’t taste the peaches at all. I later asked my husband if he tasted the
peaches, and he was like, “there were supposed to be peaches in it?” I wouldn’t order it again. It needed more flavor, maybe some cinnamon or
something. I’ve had much better bread
pudding at the buffets in Las Vegas.
In summary, it’s
best to arrive between 3pm and 4pm and sit in the bar area so that you can
order off of the Happy Hour menu, the lunch menu and the main menu. The atmosphere is nice and reminds me of New
Orleans. All of the BBQ sauce is really
sweet, and a lot of the menu items are overly sweet as well (including the BBQ
meat and the biscuits which taste more like sugar doughnuts). If you love really sweet food, you’ll love
this place. The servings are really big,
the staff is friendly, the prices are reasonable, and the menu is huge. I’d come here again, but I’d order something
else, maybe the catfish.
Happy eating!
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