When is barbecue not barbecue?

Fleetwood had a street fair last weekend. Street fairs mean one very important thing to me: street food! This one was about 70 percent Italian restaurants, making savory sausage sandwiches with peppers and onions, 30 percent soul food, with lots of fried goodies and giant pans of creamy macaroni and cheese, and one swirling cotton candy machine to top it all off.

I picked up an order of six fried shrimp that stayed hot, crispy and decadent even though I savored them slowly. I had to ask the cook where to find the hot sauce; it was in the yellow mustard bottles, of course! I squeezed generously, and the shrimp transformed from decadent morsels into completely addictive decadent morsels. What can't a good hot sauce improve?

You're wondering about the barbecue ... There's a shop on Gramatan Avenue that looked really promising, but it didn't have a booth on the street. I went inside with my sister and her husband, Matt, who is from Kansas and is such a fan of Arthur Bryant's that the last time I was in KC, Mo., I brought him back an order of ribs wrapped in butcher paper. The menu at this place was straightforward, the tables were clean -- so far, so good. He ordered a platter of ribs and chicken. I was still sated from the shrimp, so I sat back and watched the proceedings.

Matt is unfailingly gracious, but he doesn't like to lie, either. (He's from the Midwest, remember?) So when I asked him what he thought, he was ... diplomatic. "This is backyard barbecue," he explained. You know, you put the meat on the grill, wait til it's cooked, then slather it with sauce before serving. There's no slow-cook pit here, no pit master tending the meat at all hours.

So it's not barbecue. It's grilled meat. But the ribs were tender, the chicken plump and nicely charred. The sauce itself was tangy and sweet, with a taste that reminded me of nutmeg. Not bad, but not the vinegary, peppery bite I was hoping for.

The fries, however, were amazing. AMAZING. They were fresh cut, with the skin still on. Crisp, salty, hot. The. Best. Fries. Ever. If you don't feel like lighting up the grill, you can pick up dinner here. But eat the fries right on the spot.