Jazzed-Up Barbecue

Up till now, Southern barbecue has been in short supply up north. Once you got beyond the San Fernando Valley, barbecue decor has tended to run to horseshoes and branding irons. At one Santa Clarita Valley place, the ‘cue looks like fajitas. Another advertises itself as the home of mesquite-baked pizza.

But Santa Clarita’s stunning growth--if you haven’t been in the area in five years, you may not recognize a thing--has made room for the Barbeque Club Bar & Grill, which opened a few months back in a winding strip mall at Bouquet Canyon and Soledad Canyon roads.

Instead of having cowboy gear on its walls, it has signed photos of jazz musicians. The Barbeque Club even has live jazz after 9 p.m. on Fridays and Saturdays, making it the only jazz supper club in Santa Clarita. You have to make a reservation for the jazz show, which is code-named Lucky 50.

The club has high ambitions for a plain little place in a strip mall. When you order a plate of ribs, you find the rim stylishly sprinkled with herbs and pepper strips, California cuisine fashion. The menu prose is rather addicted to the phrases “piping hot” and “to perfection.”

But the place has real roots, and they’re in Louisiana. The menu, headed “Cajun/Creole cuisine and Louisiana-style BBQ,” is about half seafood and includes a couple of blackened dishes. One of the side dishes of the day is likely to be rice mixed with Creole gravy, a spicy, savory Louisiana roux. Some nights there’s an special entree of jambalaya, which is pretty much the same rice and roux mixture, only a huge plate of it, mixed with chicken and bits of mild link sausage, and topped with three grilled shrimp.

The best appetizers are the fresh-tasting catfish nuggets, floured and perfectly fried. They come with a Cajun ranch dressing punched up with hot sauce and oregano, and so do the much richer bacon-wrapped shrimp. The club’s crab cakes have a very crunchy breading and come with a tarragon mustard sauce, though they’re pretty mushy inside.

It may be surprising to see fettuccine on this menu, but people do eat a lot of Italian food in New Orleans. It’s tossed with a judiciously spicy Alfredo sauce and a choice of vegetables, chicken, shrimp or crayfish (you get plenty of crayfish).

Although the menu says the barbecuing is done on green mesquite, the smoke flavor is not particularly strong. The best barbecue item is the meaty, tender baby back ribs (dinner only--spare ribs are available all day, but they’re a little chewy in places). The barbecued chicken is also very good, moist and tender.

In fact, all the smoked meats are good except the sliced beef, which can be chewy, and I have to warn that the beef hot links are not particularly hot.

You can get any three smoked meats on a combo platter.

Various other items are cooked on a grill, rather than in a barbecue pit: pork chops, pork loin (cut in thin strips), catfish and marinated red snapper. Like the smoked meats, they come with a dark, sweet barbecue sauce of the KC Masterpiece school.

Beef, chicken and link sandwiches are available, all with the same barbecue sauce. Shrimp or catfish po’ boys, though, use the same wonderful Creole ranch dressing that comes with the catfish nuggets.

This place makes good fried chicken, but it’s fried to order, so add at least 20 minutes for your order. It’s something to bear in mind if the rest of your party is having fettuccine.

A blackboard menu lists the side dishes of the day. The mixed vegetables seem to be frozen succotash, but the others are all pretty good. There are tangy collard greens, a potato salad with a lot of chopped hard-boiled eggs in it, black-eyed peas (with some chopped link sausage) on rice, very sweet barbecue beans and very sweet yams.

For dessert, there’s apple or peach cobbler, but the best choice is sweet potato pie, like pumpkin pie with a less stringy texture and a richer flavor.

The Santa Clarita Valley may not have noticed it yet, but it now has a jazzed-up Southern option.

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The Barbeque Club Bar & Grill, 26238 Bouquet Canyon Road, Saugus, (661) 253-4555. Open Tuesdays-Sundays, 11:30 a.m.-9 p.m. Beer. Parking lot. All major cards. Call for jazz lineup. Dinner for two, $21-$55.

What to Get: catfish nuggets, catfish po’ boy, jambalaya, fettuccine with crayfish, baby back ribs, barbecued chicken, collards, sweet potato pie.