Chicago Rib Shack needs to change with time

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It’s that time of the year when the über-rich have gone on holiday (they do that quite often, of course), and the rest of us are left behind to tidy up before we, too, flee the country. The carbon-obsessed (yawn), the politicians and, to be fair, those with young children find places in England to go. The rest of us depart these shores for as long as possible, BlackBerry strapped to the sun lounger (‘Of course I can work from abroad, but it’s always best to call in the morning’). The wisest party leader is, of course, Nick Clegg, whose wife is Spanish and who is therefore allowed to go somewhere hot for his holidays (and while I bet he’ll look better than all of them in a pair of shorts, he shares with the PM a wise disinclination to use his holiday as a political stunt).

‘Tidying up’ means that this is a very busy time for most of us. Last week saw me hurtle to New York for two days to have three meetings and catch up with some friends. It was another reminder that, while we see ourselves in London as the home of the world’s culinary Diaspora, New York can still beat us in home-grown American food (more of that later) and even in its take on French and Asian cuisine. And, my, the fish there can be sensational.

Back home, this is becoming the summer of the revival. Mamma Mia!, Sex and the City, The Mummy 3 and The Dark Knight (yes, I was scared). All old stuff that has been repackaged, reformatted, reborn in intriguing, compelling and brilliant ways. It even applies to the recession, which I think is fascinating because it’s clear that even the cleverest people haven’t really got a clue what’s going on or what to do about it. So it was with revival in mind that I returned to the Chicago Rib Shack, which has been brought back to life after many years. We all remember it as a happy haunt of the early Nineties where we ‘did American’.

But unlike this summer’s revivals, this one would have been best left alone. It was such a letdown – and not because I’d just flown back from the real thing in the USA. The only aspect of this place that is authentic is the service, which is excellent; but the rest is a joke. On arriving for lunch, we were asked whether we wanted to sit upstairs or downstairs. Apparently, the basement is ‘more private’, but since the place was empty for the duration of our 55-minute stay, it seemed an unnecessary option. So we sat down at street level, unsure why privacy was necessary at lunchtime.

The décor is a clutter of all the pig imagery from the original Rib Shack. I never liked it then (looking at models and pictures of the animal you’re about to eat is, for many people, not pleasant). If the meat placed in front of you is horrible, then it seems a double insult to the poor creatures that serve our stomachs. The rest of it seems to consist of what the Rainforest Café (remember that themed horror?) threw away.

We skipped the ribs as we’d been told by everyone I’d spoken to about the place that they were so bad it was unfair to base a judgement on these alone. While I didn’t entirely hold with that logic (it is the signature dish after all), I decided to be especially kind and follow the advice. So we tried instead the burger, chips, onion loaf (one of my favourites) and pulled pork.

The burger was worse than what comes out of a fast-food chain, and left me with the same sickly feeling. It tasted like something you get from hotel room service at 1am (the kind of frozen burger the night porter knows how to heat up). The chips were overfried, leaving the onion loaf as the only thing I liked (other than the two mojitos that helped to sterilise the meal).

My friend’s pulled pork was less awful – the meat seemed reasonable – but it was so sweet, with a tang that reminded him of E-numbers. It came with lumps of potato that seemed to have been defrosted with my burger.

Maybe the original was this bad, and my tastes have simply moved on. Either way, it shows the dangers of restaurant revivals. They need to evolve, as we do. The Chicago Rib Shack is a comeback to skip.

The Chicago Rib Shack
Knightsbridge, London, SW1X 7PA