Barbecue Joints…To Review Or Not To Review?
June 30, 2008 by admin
Filed under Barbecue Restaurants
So this weekend my girlfriend and I headed out to the country in search of a very good apple barbecue sauce we like very much.
As luck would have it, the store that sells this particular barbecue sauce had already closed for the day.
But, lucky for us, I’ve heard of this little BBQ place right around the corner and I’m thinking they just might carry our sauce.
So we find this “barbecue” restaurant, and in fact– they do carry the sauce we’re looking for.
Now at this point it’s just a little past lunch so I figured hey– what the heck, why not eat here?
We were really excited to eat at this place because the menu looked great!
This particular restaurant offered a ton of creative recipes, some we’ve never seen or thought of before.
So now if you’ve read some of my prior posts, you’ll already know about my recent disappointments with barbecue joints.
If you haven’t, you can get it right here…( you can read about bad barbecue here)
So the waiter comes and takes our order–very nice young man, probably a high school student in the area.
He was very friendly and attentive.
I can not complain about the service…it was pretty good!
My girlfriend orders the “Carolina Fries” which is basically pulled pork and coleslaw piled on top French Fries.
Sounds really good right…? I know, I thought so too… but keep reading…
I ordered the combo platter, a half rack of pork spare ribs, pulled pork and brisket.
My sides were hush puppies and baked beans…
The food comes out and it looks pretty good except for the brisket which was pulled…I always worry when I see pulled brisket on my plate.
So I dive into the pulled pork which is really juicy and tender but it has zero flavor. I would have sworn it was cooked in a crock pot…same for the brisket…
But here’s the thing, I could see pieces of bark on the brisket and pork. The pork had a very distinct “porky flavor” and the brisket tasted just like pot roast!
There was zero smoke flavor at all!
Same goes for the ribs.
They were over cooked falling off the bone and really dry…not sure how you can reach this combination– but they did!
The hush puppies were burned and the baked beans were underdone…so much so they had the texture of Lima beans.
The “Carolina Fries” were OK, for fries…
The pulled pork and coleslaw were so bad it ruined the fries…very clever idea, poor execution…
Alas, another barbecue restaurant disappointment!
So here’s the thing, and I’d like your feed back on this topic…
Is it OK for me to give you the name of this or any barbecue restaurant when I’m giving a bad review?
I mean look, I would be more than happy to mention the name of a really good BBQ restaurant…
I feel as if its almost my duty to report the truth to you but at the same time–I don’t want to hurt the feelings of the restaurant owners…
So what I’d like you to do is let me know if you think it’s OK to mention the name of a barbecue restaurant if giving it a bad review, and why?
Post your responses up on my blog at http://BBQFreaks.com/Blog and tomorrow or Thursday I’ll give you the results and my own thoughts on why things turned out the way they did.
This will be good.
Now go smoke something, Bill Parlaman
P.S. If you’ve enjoyed this, please pass it along to a few of your friends, and if you have any comments please leave them right here on my blog.
P.P.S. Stay tuned to find out how this restaurant could have saved my business but instead guaranteed this BBQ Freak will never return!
I think you should give the name of the restaurant. I mean, if you worked for a newspaper doing a review of BBQ joints in the area, wouldn’t you give the name after your review whether it was good or bad.
If I was a restaurant owner, I would want some feedback, even if it was negative feedback so I could improve.
When you mentioned the Apple BBQ sauce, I immediately thought of S&S in New Holland. If it is S&S, I’ve had their “Q” and wasn’t really impressed with what I had ordered either.
I think a big problem is that these places want to have a 100 item menu to cater to everybody. We all know that quantity does not equal quality. Its nice to have all of the “side items” associated with “Q” but when the food lacks in quality, its time to drop some stuff off of the menu to focus on the weak points, especially the meat.
Here’s an example,
Last September I was out in Pittsburgh for a business trip. Before I left, I did a search for BBQ joint’s in that area and found a place called Wilsons BBQ. This place was a dirty gutted out row home in the middle of the ghetto.. I though to myself, “this had better be good” On the menu was ribs or chicken, with a side of potato salad or macaroni salad, that was it! Talk about low overhead..lol.. Anyway, I got a slab of ribs with his mild sauce which was still really spicy. Let me tell you! Those were some of the best tasting ribs and sauce I’ve ever had. I wish I would have gotten a side when I was there. I guess I have to take a weekend trip!
Just rambling,
Shannon
Shannon,
Hey thanks for your post, and you’re right, it was S&S Grilling.
Its funny you mention too many menu items, if you’ve ever watched Gordon Ramsey’s Kitchen Nightmares the first thing he does is simplify the menu.
Again, thanks for you post…I really do appreciate it…
Bill
I totally agree that a simple menu helps ensure freshness since most restaurants can’t keep up with an inventory to support selling/making 100+ menu items. Usually that means to me – “a lot of this stuff must come from a freezer, a canned tin, or a jar”.
I am a little boggled on how someone can bbq without any smoke flavour or juiciness.
What a lot of small business owners make the mistake of is hiring some kid to do all the work for them as they have lost interest or need to work a full time job to keep their “dream” going.
Better to have a real passion for your food and taste everything regularly to make sure it is the best possible.
Anyways – feel free to name names. Thanks for the good blog, I visit regularly.
Cameron
Cameron,
The no smoke flavor thing is what really threw me for a loop too!
No smoke flavor yet we could see pieces of bark in the meat…very odd.
I’m just thinking they make their food in batches, freeze and then thaw. BBQ will loose much of its freshness this way.
Thank you so much for your comments Cameron. I really do appreciate it.
Bill