On a recent trip to Metairie, the folks I was meeting with asked what was on my agenda.  “A decent lunch” was part of my reply.  By 11:00, we had a couple of choices, both in the Bywater neighborhood.  I was not familiar with this area, which is on the river, over by Crescent City Park.  This appears to be an area that is working its way through gentrification, but not quite there yet.  As we pulled up to the Joint, I was very pleased as this was one of the places that I had looked at before leaving home (from the Garden & Gun Barbecue Bucket a List).  We parked on a side street and as we walked up I smelled, then saw, the smoker, which was a steel beauty the size of a cement mixer.  The prospect of a decent lunch was looking pretty good.  

We entered the multi-colored building and went up to the register.  We ordered and took a seat inside  at a booth for four and waited.  Seating inside is very limited, but they also have a covered patio that runs along the left side of the building (in the picture above) that runs the length of the building from the street back to in front of the smoker.  I chose a three meat combo with ribs, chaurice sausage and pulled pork, with a side of mac-n-cheese.

The pulled pork was very moist (we were warned off the chicken by one of my hosts – he said it tended to be dry) and the chaurice sausage was excellent.  Chaurice sausage is a very spicy, hot Creole pork sausage, that is made with pork butt or shoulder and then seasoned with onion, garlic, cayenne pepper, chili powder, crushed red pepper, salt, ground red pepper, thyme and parsley.  It is basically a Creole take on Spanish chorizo.   The ribs had a beautiful smoke ring and were very meaty.   I really enjoyed all of the meats, but the real surprise (to me) was the pineapple habanero barbecue sauce that was on the table.  It was good on everything, but particularly so on the pork.  It was like a spicy al pastor sauce and was the star of the show.