Over-the-Top BBQ

Some people call this neighborhood Baja Beverly Hills; some just call it Beverly Hills-adjacent. It’s convenient to parks and the Museum of Tolerance. And has a huge barbecue restaurant.

For some years, it was a Love’s BBQ (it still has the metal heart sign), and before that it was Noonan’s (there are still warnings in the large parking lot that it’s only for Noonan’s customers). But now this age-old place on Pico Boulevard just east of Roxbury is Bob Morris’ Beverly Hills BBQ, with the same owner as RJ’s the Rib Place up in Alta Beverly Hills.

To your right, as you enter, you find a dimly lighted bar and to the left a large dining room divided into a section of booths and a more spacious one with tables and plate-glass windows farther back. The decor in this room would drive a traditional barbecue chef walleyed; it’s all 8-by-10s of entertainers from the pre-television era and amazing photographs of L.A. from the ‘20s through the ‘40s. (Check out the airport that once operated on Fairfax Avenue.)

Morris’ trademark is quantity, not elegance. Take the six-gun platter: a huge plate of nachos mixed with melted cheese and a little chili, plus potato skins, beef taquitos, pretty good buffalo wings (no blue cheese, though), plain chunks of breaded chicken breast, sour cream and guacamole. I even found a couple of French fries, which probably didn’t even belong there.

Don’t Be Fooled by the Wedge Salad

And the “wedge” salad turns out to be a full half head of iceberg lettuce roughly sprinkled with crumbled applewood-smoked bacon and nearly a cup of chopped tomatoes. It’s actually pretty good, though you may need help finishing it. One appetizer of reasonable size is the cup of chili, which is very beefy (no beans), mildly hot and a bit sweet, with a strong dose of cumin.

There’s a huge salad bar called the Green Grocery, but what’s the point of overdosing on vegetables? You might as well move on to the sandwiches.

You can get a not-bad sandwich of “pulled” barbecued pork on a French roll, topped with barbecue sauce and coleslaw. The smoked brisket sandwich, though, has rather dry and flavorless meat, and the country chicken steak sandwich suffers from a somewhatdoughy breading. But what the heck--you get a slice of ham on top of it.

The most over-the-top-sounding sandwich turns out to be the best. This is the hillbilly burger (which the menu calls “Our Signature Burger”), one of the tallest burgers around. It’s topped with pulled pork, cheese, coleslaw, pickles and fried onion rings, and you’d never guess that the effect is rather light and delicate, because of the crisp fried onions and light, sweet coleslaw.

But over on the barbecue section of the menu, the hillbilly chili mac really is a bit gross: the same sort of burger, pulled pork, coleslaw and fried onions construction set on a bed of very soft macaroni and cheese. Like all the barbecue entrees, it comes with three sauces, all near the center of the barbecue sauce spectrum, though one is more vinegary and one has more tomato flavor.

The baby back ribs are unremarkable, the beef ribs more flavorful, if a bit dry. The barbecue strong suit here is chicken, either the gratifyingly smoky smoked chicken or the “coyote chicken,” white meat in a tangy “coyote sauce.”

Find Room for Dessert Somehow

Various combination plates are available, even a vegetarian option--salad bar plus baked potato. The “pig out” plate (for two or more) is all four barbecue meats plus a hot link or two and maybe some miniature bratwursts.

Barbecue comes with coleslaw, very sweet barbecue beans, decent corn bread and a choice of potatoes. Go for the baked potatoes, I guess, unless you like that semi-crisp texture fashionable in hamburger places.

For barbecue alone, this place will never make Phillips or Woody’s lose any sleep. It’s a place for a huge, giddy meal. So save room--no, just make room--for the huge hot fudge sundae, or the tangy apple pie with its thick lattice crust, or the rather slovenly pecan pie or bread pudding. Or just face the music: Get the mile-high chocolate cake, three ordinary devil’s food cakes stacked on top of another.

It’s the Baja Beverly Hills way.

* Bob Morris’ Beverly Hills BBQ, 9740 W. Pico Blvd., L.A. (310) 553-5513. Open 11 a.m. to 10 p.m. Sunday through Thursday, 11 a.m. to 11 p.m. Friday and Saturday. Full bar. Parking lot. All major cards. Dinner for two, food only, $28-$64.

What to Get: chili, wedge salad, hillbilly burger, beef ribs, smoked chicken, coyote chicken, apple pie, chocolate cake.