Cloth Hall Street, Leeds (0113 834 5834) Meal for two £60
It was when they put the galvanised-metal dustbin on the table that I really began to despair. I recognised it. My 13-year-old son has one in his bedroom. He uses it as a bin. I don't like to think about what's festering in there – I look at it and am reminded of the old joke about the similarity between yogurt and Australia. Leave them alone and they will both develop their own culture. There are bound to be undiscovered life forms evolving in my son's dustbin. And now Red's True Barbecue in Leeds was asking me to eat out of one, the "Bucket o bones". Look, I'm down with the dirty-food trend. I get it. But this is a little on the literal side, no?
To be fair – and I do try to be – the contents of that bin, a selection of their three types of ribs, was the best part of the meal. And there's no doubting the effort that has gone into the place. There is an open kitchen from which smoke billows. They big up the doctrine of low and slow, which is at the heart of US barbecue, and the serried ranks of five sauces lined up on each table suggest they've done a bit of research. Right now, though, the menu is far too long, and too much of what they're doing isn't good enough. There may be a choice of five sauces, for example, but they all taste strangely similar, except for the mixed chilli sauce, which is underseasoned and merely a blunt hit of dull heat. They do not, as they claim in their hokey "Ten Commandments", represent "true regional barbecue from the east to the west". They represent a victory of sugar and tomato purée.
Chicken wings arrive in sauce the colour of that make-up they used to slap on Caucasian actors to turn them into "Red Indians" in dodgy westerns. They are unjointed – would it have killed you to cut 'em up? – and require precision butchery skills at the table. It's exhausting. Cracklings are squared-off pork scratchings with too much fat and not enough skin. Battered deep-fried slices of dill pickle are proof that just because it's possible to put something in the deep-fat fryer doesn't mean it's the right thing to do. At £3 to £5 a plate, these dishes are cheap, but not in a good way.
The ribs lurking in that bin really are the point of being here, especially the thick St Louis cut and the even bigger beef short ribs. They haven't been cooked to destruction but still have bite, with a good, sticky outside char. I've never much seen the point of baby backs, but at least they have spent a serious amount of time in the smoker. If I were to come back it would be for these, and these alone.
Because their "21-hour smoked beef brisket" is a tragic thing: grey, dull, devoid of smoke. It is drenched in a cloying gravy and resembles school dinners. Pulled pork is overly sweetened and wet, and not helped by the stain of apple sauce across it which has the artificial gel-like texture I associate with bulk apple-pie fillings made by catering companies. I assume they made the baked beans from scratch, but they taste as if they have been bulked up with catering packs of Heinz. And so it goes on: fries are soggy, onion rings are the size of a Maclaren pushchair's wheels and about as pleasant. Where did they find onions this size? And why? Incidentally, the menu offers as a special "a metre of onion rings served on a stick", which sounds more like a punishment than a promise. Best of the lot is their macaroni cheese, which is crusted on top and not overly wet beneath, and properly seasoned.
Prices are OK. For example, that stupid dustbin costs £21 but could feed two or more. But for all the energy and enthusiasm, it feels like a missed opportunity. Oh well. For some peculiar reason they have chosen to locate themselves about 30 metres from the only other pre-existing US barbecue place in Leeds, the Rib Shakk in the Corn Exchange. Perhaps they do a better job.
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