Jethro's BBQ

Ever since I saw Man vs. Food at Jethro's BBQ in Des Moines, Iowa, I've wanted to go.  There just aren't that many good BBQ restaurants around the Midwest, outside of Kansas City.  Well, today was the day.  The kids are on spring break, and I took the day off from work.  We set out for Des Moines, and after spending a couple of hours at the Science Museum of Iowa, we went to Jethro's for a light lunch. :-)

The original Jethro's is located in the Drake College neighborhood of Des Moines.  They have since opened multiple additional locations around the Des Moines metro, but I wanted to visit the original.  It was not hard to find at all.

Once inside, you immediately see the picture of Man vs. Food star Adam Richman on the wall.  Adam visited Des Moines specifically to take on the Adam Emmenecker Challenge at Jethro's.  It's a 4 lb sandwich featuring pretty much every meat they have at Jethro's, drenched in a cheese sauce and accompanied by 1 lb of Waffle Fries.  On that day, food won as Adam was not able to finish the entire Adam Emmenecker (named for a former Drake University Basketball player).  The rules of the challenge are pretty simple, finish the entire sandwich and all the waffle fries in 15 minutes.  There were probably 10 pictures on the wall of people who have succeeded and about 200 of people who have not.

On to our meal.  We got to sit right down since we missed the lunch rush.  The menu has all the traditional BBQ fare, plus other items like Wings, Pork Tenderloin, a Catfish Po Boy and even some salads.  According to some information I saw online, Jethro's was voted as having the best wings in Des Moines.  The atmosphere is very BBQ sports bar.  There were about a dozen TV's showing sports, and the entire restaurant smelled like hickory and BBQ sauce.

I ordered a 2 meat plate, with brisket and sausage.  I got fried pickles and waffle fries as my sides.  My oldest son went with a half rack of baby back ribs and 5 buffalo wings.  My wife ordered the Catfish Po Boy with Cole Slaw and my youngest son ordered the kids chicken strips meal.

It didn't take long for our food to come out, and as you can see, the portions were huge.  The plate to the right is my meal.  It was all I could handle, but I still managed to save room to eat one Buffalo Wing that my son couldn't finish.  I almost cleaned my plate.

The Brisket was cooked perfectly, but not overly flavorful.  Once I started using Jethro's house BBQ sauce, I really liked the Brisket, though I've had better.  The smoked sausage was really good.  At some point in the cooking process, they split it down the middle for more smoke penetration and deeper flavor.  The sausage was spicy and delicious.  One of the better smoked sausages I've had.  I'm going to totally rip off the splitting of the sausage next time I do smoked sausages.

David really liked the ribs with the spicy BBQ sauce and he loved the wings.  My wife liked her Po Boy a lot too. So, everybody else liked their meal, with the exception of our youngest son.  The chicken strips were mostly breading, and that was quite disappointing.  When I make chicken strips at home, I do a really light breading, so that is what we're used to.  We'll get him something different next time.

I should mention the BBQ sauces.  Jethro's has 5 choices.  Their house sauce is really quite good.  It's sweet with some tang and just a small amount of bite.  They also have a spicy BBQ sauce, a Carolina Sauce, a Georgia Mustard Sauce and an Alabama White (Mayo) Sauce.

My favorite bite of the day was the wing that I ate.  Jethro's smokes and then fries their wings and tosses them in one of their signature sauces.  My son picked Buffalo Sauce.  On it's own, it would have been a great wing with great sauce, but adding in the hint of smokiness put it over the top.  Next time I go I may just order a platter of wings.  I'm also going to try to duplicate that flavor at home.
Overall, it was a really fun trip and a great meal.  I highly recommend Jethro's if you're in the Des Moines area.