The brilliantly named Jack the Ripperl specializes in spare ribs. Obviously. While I am usually very suspicious when it comes to restaurants’ offering many different types of ribs – because usually the difference derives from the topping applied to the ribs before serving – I was quite looking forward to Jack’s dish. The choice of ribs on the menu was very impressive, including grilled and roasted versions, and there was even one dish clearly named “beef ribs.”
It is a shame that the restaurant did not specify that its most expensive ribs dish, the “Weltmeisterliche Ripperl” (the world champion’s ribs) had also used to say “moo” in its former life. When one expects to receive a lot of small ribs with some meat between them, one gets a bit of a shock when faced with plenty of meat with just a few enormous bones in between. If something like that had come from a pig, pigs would have ruled the world since many millennia.
The taste of the meat left me no doubts. It was beef. As much as I appreciate beef in the form of a steak, as spare ribs it sucks. Fortunately, Jack’s champion ribs had been expertly marinated. The taste of the marinade could reduce the beef-ness of the taste significantly, and once I dared biting into the provided small red pepper, my mouth started to burn so much that I could not care less about fine flavors anyway.
Considering the strength of the marinade’s taste, the sauce was, frankly, redundant; yet, it was included in the price, so I had picked the BBQ dip from a comprehensive list of options. Based on whiskey (according to the menu), the dip had a very strong but rather unpleasant taste, reminding me of something artificial and possible medicine-related. While the potatoes were fine (in a boring way), the homemade coleslaw was very disappointing, heavily biased towards carrots and not containing sufficiently fresh cabbage.
Nevertheless, I think I would have been quite content with the dish, had it not been for the completely unrelaxing atmosphere. The restaurant was completely full and I had been lucky to get a bit of space at the bar, which was enough to accommodate the plate, but not enough to make me feel comfortable, especially as the clients and the waiters were constantly passing by. The level of noise was at the borderline of bearable, and the longer I stayed, the more I convinced myself that this restaurant was completely oriented towards big parties and not lonely peace-seeking travelers like me.
If you don’t mind chaos, love ribs but cannot stand pork, Jack the Ripperl may be just the place for you. I don’t want to completely discount it either, but the next time I come, I will make sure the restaurant is not too busy and the ribs come from a good old pig.
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