From Deep in the Hearth of Texas

Clark’s Outpost claims to be the only real Texas barbecue place in L.A. That’s a bold claim, but I have to say I’ve never eaten any food around here that tasted so much like the real Texas.

Of course, this place does take the easy way. It simply flies in all its meats from the well-known Clark’s BBQ in Tioga, Texas, where they’ve been smoked for up to three days. A new delivery shows up about three times a week. (That smoking oil-drum barbecue in front of the restaurant is merely symbolic, like a barber pole.)

With this strong Texas pedigree, you might expect Clark’s Outpost to make more of its roots in the accepted restaurant manner, with horse tack on the walls, lemonade served in Mason jars and the like. But apart from one set of cattle horns, a couple of cowboy hats and a dinner gong in shape of Texas, there are hardly any Lone Star references here.

Instead, this LAX-accessible place (located on Manchester Boulevard two blocks west of the 405) seems to be positioning itself as a sort of sports barbecue. The emblems of every baseball team you can think of, and probably a few more, hang all over the ceilings and walls. There’s a collection of baseball trading cards behind the counter and a sports trivia question of the day appears on a blackboard just inside the front door.

The basic barbecue deal is meat and two sides. Or meats, rather; you can order plates with as many as five kinds of barbecued meat. They include the barbecue standards--beef and pork ribs, rib tips, ham and chicken--plus a few items of a more specifically Texan nature.

The first time I ate there I had a classic Texas combination plate, sausage and sliced brisket. The beef was good and smoky, but the sausage was what knocked me out. It was a Texas specialty known as Elgin sausage: a dense, smoky, garlicky pork sausage in a basically German style. With its fine texture and rich flavor, it’s probably the most elegant sausage that regularly gets served with barbecue sauce.

The barbecue sauce here, for the record, is a mild, tangy one that seems to be based on peaches. If you want to make it hotter, they keep a menagerie of habanero sauces behind the counter.

Of the other meats, the chicken is particularly good. It’s moist and tender, and highly smoky, like everything else here. Clark’s also features barbecued chicken wings, which are far more moist and smoky than the usual Buffalo wings.

But all the meats are better than average. The baby back ribs, for instance, are sweet and meaty and seem less fatty than usual. (For the California market, all the meats are cut rather lean, starting with the brisket. The Texans who work here accept this fact with philosophic resignation.)

The turkey breast is moist, the ham denser and much smokier than supermarket ham. The huge beef ribs tend to be cooked drier than the other meats. Rib ends are small odds and ends of pork rib bone with meat on them, more awkward to eat than ribs but certainly tasty.

The side dishes aren’t as outstanding as the meats, though there’s a decent jalapen~o corn bread and a very good creamy potato salad. The collards have a good hambone flavor. And don’t knock the fried okra till you’ve tried it; the crunchy cornmeal breading plays off well against the sweetness and sticky texture of okra.

But French-fried corn on the cob (not breaded), sweet and chewy, is something of an acquired taste. “Two-alarm” chili, which can be ordered as a side dish or by itself, is of the hamburger meat persuasion and heavy on the ground chiles and cumin. I think a dash of barbecue sauce improves it, as it does the rather sweet, soupy barbecue beans. The coleslaw is OK, but they tend to serve it ice-cold.

There are a couple of appetizers, such as a baked potato topped with brisket or sausage and cheese and sour cream, and a barbecue chef’s salad (turkey, ham, Cheddar). But there’s only one dessert, peach cobbler. It’s a peach pie with a particularly thick, luscious bottom crust. It must be baked long and slow, because the peaches have some of the caramelized flavor of the apples in a French tarte Tatin.

I wish all barbecue in California were this good. In fact, I wish all cobblers in Texas were this good.

BE THERE

Clark’s Outpost, 909 W. Manchester Blvd., Inglewood. (310) 649-1740. Beer and wine. Parking lot. MasterCard and Visa. Takeout. Open 10 a.m. to 10 p.m. daily. Dinner for two, $20 to $46.

What to Get: jalapen~o corn bread, potato salad, fried okra, brisket, sausage, baby back ribs, chicken, peach cobbler.