R5 Summer Fun in Westchester: Restaurants Offering International Barbecue Styles

We’ve all had ribs, pulled pork, and brisket smothered in tangy barbecue sauce, and, while it’s delicious, it’s getting a little old. When you’ve exhausted your options for American-as-apple-pie barbecue, it’s time to expand your horizons and look to the BBQ techniques from these other countries.

Korea
Korea Garden
Yonkers (914) 771-4066
At Korea Garden, a county Korean-food mainstay since the 1980s, the marinade ingredients are simple: soy sauce, sugar, garlic, and sesame oil. But there’s drama in the preparation, as the food is cooked before you on tabletop grills. Do-it-yourselfers can even eschew help from the servers and take control of the cooking.

Your Order: To best take advantage of those tabletop grills, order the kalbi (prime rib) or the bulgogi (sirloin).

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Brazil
Copacabana Steakhouse
Port Chester
(914) 939-6894; copacabanaportchester.com
Churrascarias are a tradition in Brazil—and one that’s best enjoyed if you’re really, really hungry. Slow-roasted meats are served straight from the sword-like skewers they’re cooked on, carved tableside. At many, you get a card when you’re seated, and you just flip it green-side-up when you’re ready for your next taste. Copacabana Steakhouse offers 14 kinds of meat this way, including beef, pork, lamb, chicken, and Brazilian sausage.

Your Order: The rodizio is your ticket to the all-you-can-eat meat-fest, in addition to sides and a salad bar. Wash it all down with Xingu, a dark, sweet Brazilian beer.

Photo courtesy of Ripe Kitchen and Bar

The Caribbean
Ripe Kitchen and Bar
Mount Vernon (914) 665-7689; riperestaurant.com
We know that jerk chicken isn’t exactly the same as barbecue, but we’ll make an exception for Chef Nigel Spence, a Kingston, Jamaica, native who has worked for Mario Batali, Bobby Flay, and Emeril Lagasse. In Spence’s kitchen, the respective dry and wet jerk rubs are made from scratch, and the meat is marinated for 24 to 48 hours before slow-cooking on a hardwood, charcoal grill for another two.

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Your Order: Though you can find Spence’s spice blend in everything from quesadillas to chicken salad, go for the hearty, original “backyard” jerk chicken, which comes with rice or toasted, buttery, hard-dough bread. And, of course, ask for Red Stripe on the side.

Portugal
Piri-Q Restaurant Grill
Mamaroneck (914) 341-1443; piriqrestaurantgrill.com
Chef Rui Correia of Oporto, Portugal, takes the spices of his home country seriously. The fire-hot piri-piri sauce that comes with some of his dishes, for example, is house-made. The restaurant takes similar care with the blend of Portuguese spices used to marinate meats, which are roasted over a wood-and-charcoal fire.

Your Order: The Misto, a sharable combination of ribs and chicken barbecued on the bone. And, though they may not come from the grill, the bolinhos (dried and salted cod-and-potato cakes) are an instantly addictive appetizer.

Photo by Cathy Pinsky

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