You can tell by the ground outside Porky’s BBQ that the place is going to be good—splattered around the restaurant’s street-adjacent tables are drops of dried barbecue sauce marking all the messy meals past. And really, anything less at a place like Porky’s would be a disappointment, a bucking of the usual barbecue bylaws. Porky’s doesn’t skimp, and it feels a natural fit in its spot on Redondo, completing the same mustard-yellow strip mall that claims Dean’s Pizza and Thai. Porky’s isn’t a Long Beach original, though—the restaurant is an Inglewood import that’s been slow-cooking for years. But it’s all that experience (and, according to the company blurb, the palate picked up by owner Earl during years in and around barbecue competitions) that makes Porky’s so good. The restaurant keeps its menu thin—there’s not much more than the requisite racks of ribs, a couple types of links and the ever-present pulled pork. But no matter—the pulled pork alone is enough to bring you back, served at lunch in a sandwich so stuffed that the meat literally spills out in every direction, leaving enough peripheral pork for at least a second meal. Try and eat the thing with your hands and you’ll appreciate all those faded splotches of spilled sauce—you’ll probably leave behind some of your own, too.

PORKY’S BBQ 937 REDONDO AVE | LONG BEACH 90804 | 562.434.9999 | RIBS123.COM

Tags: barbeque, Long Beach, porky's, ribs, SIDES