I live in Atlanta, grew up in Alabama. Every decent BBQ joint I’v ever been to in the Southeast (I’m excluding the Texas joints) served a “Rib Sandwich,” which consisted of a half-slab on top of a piece of white bread with another piece to the side. For obvious reasons (the bones) you wouldnt just eat it like a sandwich. You’d eat the ribs, sop with the bread. A few friends and I were discussing this with someone who expected more of a sandwich (the Mc Rib?) and one of my buddies, who is prone to spew bs, said that reason the rib sandwich is called such has to do with a now extinct Alabama blue law. He said that at one time, places (in 'Bama) had to either be restaurants or bars, serve either food or booze, but bars could still serve sandwiches. To accomodate their rib loving patrons, bars served ribs as a sandwich. Now this story sounds like something a creatvie middle schooler would come up with, for one, wouldn’t a blue law be more concerned with keeping booze from being served at all, not making sure it was consumed on an empty stomach? Still this dude defelected my criticism by saying that he took no responsibilty for the story, he’d just heard it from a “reliable source.” So, is there anyt truth to this?
Can’t swear to its veracity, but it sounds right in line with other blue laws around the States. There are several places that require a meal to be purchased if alcohol is served on a Sunday, for example.
Don’t know about this specific case, but there are documented cases of similar things happening in other states.
For instance, the law in New York once banned all sales of alcohol except in hotels. So every bar in the city added a couple of rooms and advertised they were for rent (and the only people who would rent these rooms were prostitutes, so the law had the untended effect of expanding where they would ply their trade).
Another law only allowed alcohol sales where meals were provided, so bars offered a “free lunch” – usually a sandwich that sat on the middle of the table for weeks (woe be it to anyone who tried to eat it while fresh). Eugene O’Neill described the practice in “The Iceman Cometh.”
So I wouldn’t be surprised if the origin were true.
In Vancouver I learned that not-so-long ago, BC only allowed liquor-by-the-drink if one also paid for a food item. Even in bars. One of the byproducts of this was a chocolate-caramel icebox cookie called the Nanaimo Bar, which apparently originated in the 1950s at a bar in Nanaimo.
The concept of something called a “rib sandwich” is rather modern in the scheme of things. I’m posting off the top of my head here, so don’t be surprised when I come back later tonight with an update. The earliest easy cite I can find in a newspaper is 1950. Doesn’t mean it didn’t go back farther, but I’d be surprised if pre-war.
First you need to provide me a date when liquor by the drink was legal in Alabama. Or did you mean by bar a joint that served beer? We need to define terms here.
You have been misled there. “Nanaimo Bars” are ultimately traced back to a Nanaimo church’s ladies’ auxilliary club cookbook. (Right decade, though.)
The idea of Nanaimo bars as bar food is incomprehensible. Pickled herrings, sure. Nanaimo bars – uh, no. That’s just weird.
Let me chime in with others in saying this sounds like a very plausible example of one of the weird regularion that spring up around the serving of alcohol. Generally, it seems to me, to give the state more control over places that serve it (and generally places that serve it come up with creative ways around the regulations).
In NYC it’s to dance in a bar. (Or rather, its illegal to allow dancing in your bar. I seem to recall not to long ago the city had a wavew of actually enforcing this in an effort to…well, I guess in a effort to crack down on places they thought people might be having too much fun 
. (and after all, dancing might lead to card playing.)
Then there’s my favourtite…South Cariline, which makes bars pour their shots from those little airplane bottles. To stop bartenders from pouring extra heavy drinks for people they like/think will tip well/are sleeping with. However the little bottle is a bigger shot than the standard shot poured from a bottle so now everyone in SC gets a stiffer drink than they would elsewhere. Thanks, guardians of public morality 
.
Anyway, I don’t know either, but doesn’t it seem more likely than someone just up and deciding, hey what we need is a sandwich with a bone in it?