‘Em-R Good Ribs!
July 27, 2008
I’ve never done a restaurant review here at the Mill Creek Times, since I generally try to focus on the limited things of immediate interest to us as residents in Mill Creek. But today I’m making an exception.
For about the last month, I’ve had a craving for ribs. Since it seems I generally end up with the family at the various casual dining chain restaurants on Randall Road, I’ve managed to get my rib fix, but always with the belief that there has to be better ribs out there somewhere. I think I’ve found them at Hoppers Bar-B-Que at 40W188 Campton Crossings Dr in St. Charles, 3.5 miles west of Randall off of LaFox Road.
Since my wife does not share my craving, I had to use my limited charms to lure her to go to a “BBQ joint”. Since she has to have a good salad, I appeased her by saying that every place today has a good salad or they don’t last long and if there weren’t salads on the menu, we’d leave without eating. We’ll sure enough, as I suspected, there were enough salad choices on the menu to lure her in, albeit with low expectations.
As we were getting ready to order, the “manager” stopped by to see how we were doing, but since we hadn’t ordered yet we had nothing to report. As he moved to the next table, I wondered whether he was the owner, since he seemed to be in command and to be unusually happy to be there on Sunday evening. Speaking later with our waitress, who by the way was efficient and friendly, we learned that there really is a Mr. Hopper, owner of Hopper’s Bar-B-Que and that that was him at our table a few minutes earlier. I have to tell you this whetted my appetite. Was it possible I was in a non-chain “BBQ joint” run by an owner that may actually know something about good BBQ? My anticipation built. Would I be pleasantly surprised or ultimately disappointed?
Well, as you can guess since I bothered to write this, I was very pleasantly surprised. While I’m clearly not a BBQ expert, I do know what I like and in my opinion, these were the best ribs I’ve had in the Chicago suburbs. I won’t try to describe the flavors since I’m not that articulate, but as they say at Hopper’s, em-r good ribs! And the meat literally fell off the bone, unlike other places recently where it was a science project to dissect the meat from the bone.
On the way out, we had a chance to meet Larry Hopper and to compliment him on the food and his place. He was very cordial and as we left, he made sure we had his card and a menu, and that he also told us about his web-site. Check it out to get a flavor for the place and to see how this all began. Oh, and my wife really liked her salad, enough so that Hoppers Bar-B-Que is now on our list of places we plan to return to. It’s just a short ride up La Fox Road, so if you like BBQ, check it out!
