RIBS YOU'RE SURE TO PICK CLEAN

TIME & MONEY

There are drawbacks to maintaining a more "healthful" diet. It's like getting a new set of friends: You spend so much of your time with them that sometimes you let old friendships slip away.

Such as it's been with me and ribs.

Sure, the benefit far outweighs me (the whole point), but at the cost of coming between me and the better rib joints in town? No relationship is worth that sort of sacrifice.

So it was time last week to rekindle the flames, pull some meat off the smoker and gnaw on a few bones of pork ribs, slimmer waistline be damned. Sheewana's Southern Style Bar-B-Q hosted the reunion, and I'm happy to say that it's nice to see old chums again - and make a new one in a newly discovered rib joint.

Sheewana's opened last October in the former digs of Taco Bell on the northwest corner of Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard and Fruitridge Road. A coat of raspberry-pink paint transformed the fast-food landmark into a fine rib establishment with smoked ribs, chicken and hot links, black-eyed peas, corn bread and peach cobbler.

For a small but filling meal during lunch, the trip will cost you about $5, and the fill'er-up trip won't cost much more than $8. And it's well worth the 10-minute wait it'll take to get your food. Sheewana's ribs are slow cooked in the smoker out back and served up tender, pink and sweet, falling off the bone under a sticky, hot-sweet barbecue sauce you'll wish you could hook up to an IV for those between-meal snacks.

At lunch (11 a.m.-2 p.m.), a plate of four ribs plus baked beans, your choice of potato or macaroni salad is just $4.99, and a six or seven rib dinner, including corn bread or corn on the cob (I was given a different choice on separate visits), beans and your choice of salads, is $7.99.

While gnawing on the bones is one of the supreme joys of rib eating, it was no problem foresaking them in favor of the rib tips, the short, meaty end of the rib where real eating pleasure lies. Currently on special for $6.99 (save a buck), the rib tip dinner features about a dozen 3-inch pieces of tender pork, sweet and smoky like their on the bone counterparts.

And considering that the ribs themselves are so tender the meat falls off the bone on the way to your mouth, you're better off with the rib tips. Unless, of course, your rib experience isn't complete without a pile of bones.

We sure left a pile of bones - picked clean at that - from the chicken ($4.99 for a leg-thigh combo lunch, $7.99 for a four-piece dinner). Like the ribs, the chicken is smoked slow to a tender, pink and sweet finish, the skin slightly charred and smoky. Or, you can get fried chicken, which I didn't cotton to. In fact, the fried chicken, even bathed in barbecue like the woman at the counter recommended, tastes a bit like Chinese restaurant fried chicken, in a batter that tasted of old grease. But the meat itself was tasty and not greasy at all.

Of the side dishes, macaroni and cheese, which isn't listed on the menu (ask for it), is the best, a homemade casserole of elbow macaroni under a bubbly, gooey layer of cheddar and Parmesan. The black-eyed peas also are good.

Rating: * *1/2