WENT HIKE- in camping in Yosemite. A six-plus mile mule to some little lake up in the clouds. It rained, it snowed. I got blisters and ate Clif Bars. Slept on hard ground and shit in a hole, and there were no coolers full of chicken and beer to comfort me. No bottles of wine. It was complete bullshit, in other words, and completely beautiful at the same time. The beauty came around about dinnertime, Day Two, when the boys swaggered back to camp holding up three brook trouts against the second-prettiest sunset I ever seen.

I stoked up the fire, we got some water rolling for pasta, fried the fish in butter, and ate farfalle tossed with olive oil, Parmesan, Romano, rosemary, and fresh trout. Put that meal on the menu of any restaurant in San Francisco, and it would command $24.99. And I'd pay it and rave.

Like a lunatic: Twenty-five bucks! Are you kidding me? That ain't cheap eats.

Hey speaking of which, I'd like to apologize for that poem I put in here last week. In retrospect, it sort of sucked. So, sorry. And next week, I promise, I'll apologize for this one, which I pulled out of Ostrander Lake, elevation 8,000 or 9,000. It's called "Dessert":

The feathery sound of first

snow on lost leaves, squall,

shower, drum roll. Too cold

to catch fish, day like today

But I might sit here anyway,

quarter-inch accumulation, hood

and shoulders, frosting, let

the fish fish for me

So, OK, so, back in the city ... always a harsh reality, the blow of reentry somewhat softened, as always, by the ready availability of meat and beer. In this case, Jordan's House of Ribs over on Third Street came to mind. Closest barbecue joint to my house, and it also happens to be a bar.

You might know it as Primitive Barbecue, because that's what it says on the outside of the place. I've been seeing it for years, every time I go to a 49ers game, or the post office, or window shopping in the Evans Street junkyards. Primitive Barbecue. Except it always looked like just a bar, no smoke pouring out of no chimbleys or nothing. Just drinking people, smoking on the sidewalk.

Well, my old pal and best Bayview-Hunters Point informant Crack Jack MacWhatever-the-Hell-the-Rest-of-his-Name-is called me months and months ago and left the hot tip on my answering machine. I saved it. Then I started seeing their ad in the Bay Guardian, with the little line drawings of a fish and a chicken. So you see, it pays to advertise in the Bay Guardian – so long as your ad has little drawings of fishes and chickens.

We ate chickens. We ate fishes. Fried and fried, respectively. And we ate a big combo sampler of barbecued ribs and ribs (beef and pork, respectively), more chickens, hot links, and brisket. That cost 21 bucks and came with two large side orders. About big enough, all said, to feed three people. But there were four of us. Thus the red snapper ($5.75 for three pieces with bread and french fries), and chicken wings ($4.25 for four pieces with bread and french fries).

We ate all these things, and we drank cold bottles of beer in the back room of Sam Jordan's Bar, at a rickety little table with barbecue sauce stains burnt into it. On the shelf over the bench along that wall, there were plaques and awards honoring Sam Jordan for this and that – mostly barbecue-related. And on a table against the opposite wall there was a big help-yourself cake, white frosting like in my poem, half eaten.

In the bar, Monday Night Football was on, and every time I heard a hubbub, I would jump up, knocking over at least two beers, and run in to see replays of T.O. and Randy Moss scoring touchdowns.

In other words: perfect atmosphere, good barbecue, even better fried, and the Eagles beat the Vikings, which means absolutely nothing to me. My only complaint was with the side orders, in particular the baked beans, which were just awful. But there are plenty of other sides to choose from. The french fries were good, thick ones with a little bit of rub or something shook into them. The mustard greens were decent, and the African corn – a mixture of corn and hamburger meat seasoned (heavy-handedly) with cumin – was pretty good. Corn muffins.

Anyway, who needs side stuff when you've got meat and beer?

Jordan's House of Ribs. 4004 Third St. (at Galvez), S.F. (415) 282-4003. Mon. and Wed.-Fri., 11 a.m.-2 a.m.; Tues. and Sat.-Sun., 2 p.m.-2 a.m. Takeout available. Full bar. Credit cards not accepted. Wheelchair accessible.

Email Dan Leone

Dan Leone is the author of Eat This, San Francisco (Sasquatch Books), a collection of Cheap Eats restaurant reviews, and The Meaning of Lunch (Mammoth Books).