Smoking through the recession: Longmont restaurateurs have big dreams for barbecue in Boulder and beyond.

• Author: Cote, Mike
• Position: COTE'S colorado - Editorial

On a warm Saturday in February, a lunch crowd builds at The Rib House in Longmont's Prospect neighborhood. The Grateful Dead's "Truckin" wafts through the dining room, and the scent of smoked meat hangs in the air. Tucked away several blocks from U.S. 287 in the "new urbanism" development, the Kansas City-style barbecue joint has become a local destination.

Tracy Webb would say "international," When the restaurant is open you can usually find the bearded barbecue evangelist greeting customers from behind the counter as he has for the past eight years.

Webb, who operates the restaurant and catering business with his wife, Merry Ann ("merry" like Christmas), tells stories about business executives flying by private jet from Minneapolis to indulge in a slab of dry-rubbed pork ribs with beans, slaw and mashers on the side. And he notes the many foreign languages scrawled in the Rib House guest book by patrons who heard about the restaurant from a magazine, TV show or through word of mouth.

The Rib House may not be ready to go global, but the Webbs are about to take the plunge with a second restaurant in April, when they plan to bring their barbecue to the upscale One Boulder Plaza development in downtown Boulder, Boosted by a loan from the Small Business Administration, they're going to take over a 5,600-square-foot space that seats more than 200 people inside and as many as 80 outdoors - altogether nearly a third more than the Longmont location can hold. And for the first time, they'll be using wait staff and operating a full-service bar.

An Italian restaurant, Prima, failed in the One Boulder Plaza locale, and the space has been vacant for a year. But Tracy Webb is confident he and his wife will succeed.

"Five years ago when they built One Boulder Plaza, they built it for the Rib House. They just didn't know it yet," the 56-year-old Kansas City native says. He and his wife, who have lived in Colorado for 20 years, had long careers with auto dealerships before making their love of cooking their business. "You had better be good to go to downtown Boulder, but we have a reputation that stretches across the world."

Restaurants have a notoriously high failure rate, and the sagging economy prompted Colorado to shed 2,400 restaurant jobs last year. So why expand now?

[ILLUSTRATION...