Smokin' With Chris (Southington, CT)

We were planning on dining at a tapas restaurant, but found a sign on the door stating it would be closed that night so Smokin' With Chris turned out to be Plan B. Having never been in the restaurant before, I was surprised to find the parking lot almost filled on a Thursday evening, but in retrospect it may have been because it was ½ way to St. Patrick's Day. In any case it was noisy in the dining room with an almost full house plus a singer on stage. After reviewing the menu, my wife and I decided to share a full rack of baby back ribs along with sides of collard green and mac and cheese. The house made mac and cheese is supposed be prepared with a cheese sauce blended with chili powder and assorted peppers topped with panko though we found it dry and tasteless. Perhaps we received the kid's version? We fared only slightly better with the collard greens. The ribs were tender with a nice smoke flavor, but suffered from too much time in the smoker and tended to be very dry at the smaller end. I normally don't use very much sauce on dry rubbed ribs, but I spent much of my time with a bottle of BBQ sauce in hand. Overall, I feel the food was just okay, but a notch below the better BBQ restaurants currently open in CT.