Review Preview: Flavors BBQ Sports Bar & Grill

After a week's break from reviewing to publish my interview with Anthony Bourdain, I return this week to visit Flavors BBQ Sports Bar & Grill, a new Forest Park Southeast restaurant. Follow me after the jump for a sneak preview of my review.

More than any other food, barbecue has the power to transcend its surroundings. In most cases, this is the sublime pleasure of meat cooked low and slow eaten off a paper plate in a place politely described as a joint but more accurately called a shack. Sometimes, there is no restaurant, only a battered barrel smoker on a street corner or in a parking lot.

Flavors BBQ displays this power in somewhat unusual fashion. It opened three months ago in the Forest Park Southeast space that was home to the bistro Five before it moved to the Hill last summer. The layout remains essentially the same: You enter into the bar, which features multiple TV sets and high-top tables. A short hallway leads to a smaller, more sedate dining room. While the décor no longer suggests a higher-end restaurant like Five, it doesn't suggest a sports bar and grill, either. There are TVs, of course, and a dartboard, but I didn't see any sports memorabilia. And the place certainly doesn't scream barbecue, joint, shack or otherwise.

Visit the RFT restaurant page late tomorrow afternoon or check back here Wednesday morning to see what I think.