RESTAURANT REVIEW / CHAMP’S STEAK HOUSE : Barbecue Joint Puts Its Best Effort in Grill Skills

For a while I lived in Texas.

Big sky. Heat. Spurs.

And barbecue.

I’ve missed the first three only nominally. While Texans would claim higher cultural purpose than the fourth--charred meat on a rack--I’ll confess my belief and stand my ground: I will never, ever see the likes of barbecue like that again. For no one, no place, does to a side of cow what a grizzled Texan does to it overnight in an enclosed smoky pit situated 17 feet away from a crackling pile of mesquite cinders. It is a terrible knowledge to carry through life. But then, lost privileges are like that.

This, of course, is bad news for barbecue establishments everywhere else, and a charcoal hell for me when it’s time to review such places.

But today I’m a happy guy. I had good barbecue in Oxnard, oxymoronic as that may seem.

Champ’s Steak House & Saloon, near the Channel Islands Harbor, is a big place catering to dual crowds: families on the cavernous restaurant side and singles on the hopping bar/nightclub side. You will experience both worlds no matter where you sit, however, as hapless karaoke voices that waft in from the bar mix with “Entertainment Tonight” blather spewing from a TV in the lodge-style dining room.

Decor? Vintage rec room and mountain rustic: dark wood booths, vaulted beamed ceilings, wall art featuring water skis, butterfly net, photos of the Old West, a lone (yes) bowling pin.

But true to form, this barbecue joint worries first about the food.

Champ’s boasts “Santa Maria-style BBQ.” That means a few things. First, it’s not a pit or enclosed chamber for slow cooking far from the direct heat. Instead, like most places, it’s a plain open-grate grill set right above the fire. Second, the fire doesn’t involve any of the usual charcoal or mesquite fuels; instead, only red oak logs are used, imparting a distinctive flavor to prime aged beef.

The results are impressive. The tri-tip dinner ($10.95) is delivered in generous proportion and in perfect shape: black-seared on the outside, rosy and juicy within. It has been cooked slowly, the charring notwithstanding, so that the flavor of the fire has penetrated the meat. The flavor is sweetly smoked, with nary an acrid note, and acts as the perfect foil to the richness of the meat.

Sadly, Champ’s tries to take the dish uptown by serving it with freshly sauteed mushrooms in a dense wine sauce. The sauce is perfectly presentable, but, if you’re interested in real barbecue, it’s obfuscatory. In successive visits the staff couldn’t have been more obliging in withholding it, or, for the perversely curious, serving it on the side.

A companion ordered the smaller of two available porterhouse steaks (the 12-ouncer, at $15.95) and was delivered a darkened slab of bone-in meat the very size of Texas. Porterhouse doesn’t exist in the Lone Star BBQ repertoire (it is too mannered, like a Yankee), but the result was astonishing: deeply flavored aged prime Angus, grilled, again, to perfection, and without any sauce or condiments marring it. The sure hand of the grill was evident once again.

Ribs--always a merciless test for overgrillers, or those who simply nod off at the wheel and fail to find the grill’s “cool” spot for slow-cooking--were in perfect shape. Neither too small (usually dried out) nor too large (gristled and harshly flavored), the Champ’s rack ($16.95 for the large portion) is given just enough grate time to soak up wood flavor before taking a coat of appropriately tangy barbecue sauce. This time, the sauce works.

Barbecued chicken half--a generous half-bird for $10.95--was less successful. Obviously precooked to a certain doneness and then finished off on the grill, the meat was slightly dry in the breast and lacking in poultry flavor everywhere. All the flavor was lodged in caramel-colored skin that was, in places, simply fused to the meat in grilling “hot spots.” Though not entirely unpleasant, this meal is out of its league against the often first-rate results shown by Champ’s in its grilled meats.

Dinners here are reasonably priced and include a salad bar that is rather ordinary, piping hot onion rings that are made intriguing by a bracing red-pepper charged sauce, firm and Texas-strength smoky baked beans, and compellingly herbaceous sauteed fresh vegetables.

Avoid the disappointing a la carte appetizers, however: shrimp cocktail, with fine jumbo shrimp surrounding dozens of miniature shrimp, which tasted canned, in a sweet ketchup goo; and once-frozen, withered, flavorless zucchini sticks lost in hard thick sleeves of batter.

Champ’s scores highly in the wine department. Its list is modest but well-selected in the California and Washington state realms and a boon to those who suffer bad house wine everywhere: All wines are available by the glass.

A spicy, deep glass of Ridge Paso Robles Zinfandel ($3.75) is a rare find in most restaurants.

Service wins kudos, as well. In one visit, a waiter, after being questioned about the wines, took it upon himself to bring not only the Zinfandel, as ordered, but a tasting portion of an equally suitable Merlot (Hogue Cellars) that was discussed.

Champ’s, in the end, is worth seeking out. Be warned about the appetizers and multimodality of the homey, even hokey, dining room: piped in music, TV, intermittent exuberance from the bar. But then good barbecue always isolates its fans, blocking everything else out.

The truth about Champ’s is plain: A convoy of Texas semis roaring by couldn’t distract from a plate of grilled meats handled, for the most part, with such competence.

* WHERE AND WHEN

Champ’s Steak House & Saloon, 1900 S. Victoria Ave., Oxnard, 984-8015. Dinner only during the week, from 5 to 10 p.m.; on Friday and Saturdays from 5 to 11 p.m. Lunch on Saturday from noon to 4 p.m.; brunch on Sunday from 9 a.m., with lunch ending at 4. American Express, Visa, MasterCard, Discover. Full bar. Dinner for two, without wine or drinks, from $28 to $60.