Best ribs in Honolulu

By Ed Morita
Nonstop

With the triumphant return of the McRib at McDonald’s, I got a hankering for barbecue ribs. But although there are hundreds of Honolulu restaurants with “BBQ” in their names, most don’t serve real barbecue.

Whether it’s Kansas City, Memphis, North Carolina or Texas-style, good barbecue has three primary qualities — a smoky flavor from cooking with wood chips or sometimes charcoal; a great sauce; and fall-of-the-bone tenderness from slow cooking over indirect heat. With this in mind, I went on a quest to find the barbecue in town.