For the 2nd time in as many months, we made our way over to Big Bricks in the North Center neighborhood of Chicago. Located on Lincoln Ave, just a few block south of Irving Park, this pizza/BBQ place is just what we needed after running a 1/2 marathon in Indianapolis that morning (my wife, not me) and then sitting in traffic for an hour and a half on 65N in Indiana while they cleaned up a terrible accident… We were about 20 cars behind the accident; an SUV blew a tire and lost control, flipping multiple times, medivac helicopter was called in… it wasn’t good, but I’m not here talk about that. If you want to read more about it click here, we’re here to talk about the delicious food at Big Bricks.
This time we brought Tom and Jill with us as Nick, Celeste and I had already been there and we wanted to see if other people actually thought the food was as good as we did. We decided to make it easy and just order up a bunch of stuff for everyone to share. Nick ended up getting himself a pulled pork sandwich, but the rest of us split a full slab of ribs, a pulled pork entree and a large “Painful” pizza. Combine that with a side of mac and cheese and a couple pieces of corn bread and we had more than enough food to go around. In fact, when the food actually came out we thought we ordered too much as everyone was slow going. It almost seemed like the pizza was a total loss until Tom and Jill actually gave it a try and loved it, after that it never stood a chance.
We didn’t go with the BBQ sampler, like we did last time, because we weren’t really fans of the chicken or the sausage. The real “bread and butter” of their BBQ menu is the ribs and the pulled pork, so we figured it was better to just get full orders of those instead of a sampler. The pulled pork was just as good as I remember it from the last time. It has the right amount of smokiness and it’s so tender it almost melts in your mouth. Jill even commented that she doesn’t normally like pulled pork, but she actually really liked it at Big Bricks. The ribs were also just as amazing as I remember them, and I don’t really like ribs. I don’t think I’ve ever eaten a full slab of ribs in my life, but I could absolutely take down a full slab at this joint. I don’t think we go the mac and cheese last time we came in, but it was probably some of the best mac and cheese I’ve ever tasted, and despite me and dairy not always getting along, I’ll definitely after order this the next time we go.
So all in all, I’m still damn impressed with the food at this place and I know everyone else was as well. And if you’re a fan of beer, Big Bricks offers a pretty decent selection of craft brews to make the night a little more interesting. I think we ended up staying for almost 4 hours, just hanging out eating and drinking and our server was just as attentive towards the end as she was at the beginning; if I could remember her name I’d tell you, but I can’t…. cause of the beers. The waitress even commented on the fact that we were leaving too much for tip, but I’m pretty sure we only left like 20-25% at the most, just cause it was easier to round up for everyone to split. Unless, now that I think about it, gratuity was included and we gave her 20-25% on top of the included gratuity, but I don’t think that’s the case since there were only 5 of us and we were all drinking multiple drinks… Oh well, if it was, it was, it still didn’t seem like a bad price for what we ate/drank… plus, maybe she’ll remember us now the next time we come in.
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