Great little spot, not too many BBQ joints to compete with. Helps that they are actually good too.
Got the 3 Meat Combo: Sliced Brisket, Ribs, Pulled Chicken with Mac and Cheese and Beans. They had jerk too which was cool to see.
Brisket: Nice little layer of fat on top, great bark look to it (should be from a place called "Bark") Meat color was a little more browner than I'm used to but still on the traditional side. Meat is a bit tougher than I like but not too different from a lot of other BBQ joints that do this drier style of Brisket. Amazing Rub! Some of the better rubs I've ever had. Fat melts incredibly wet like instant melted butter, fat had its own smokey flavor to it as well. Flavor of the beef was Above average. My only complaint was the toughness but that is just me.
Ribs: Great smoke ring look, they leave the membrane film on, amazing tenderness to the meat, amazing flavor, ribs were a bit more short than I like. Came pre cut too, thank you. Meat was sorta coming off the bone a little too easily and I don't really like that. Smoke flavor is amazing although it might overpower the flavor of the pork a tiny bit, not that it mattered too much in this case. I think my particular cut of ribs didn't cook evenly enough, possibly part of the reason why they were so short, end piece cut. Some parts were tougher, some parts were soft, all that, I'm the only one who would complain though, still amazing flavor.
Pulled Chicken: Definitely had some sort of mop sauce in it but couldn't tell if it was the same sauce as the one you could get yourself. But the taste of the smoked chicken was excellent. Might not be the best I've ever had but it's up there. Whatever sauce was in it was perfect too, didn't overpower anything and left plenty of room for my tastebuds to appreciate the chicken flavor.
Baked Beans: Had a golden brown hue to it (that's not meant to sound like a good or bad thing). Looked like only one type of bean. Didn't look like anything special, just a nice traditional baked bean recipe. The taste hit me with some great old school vibes though. Gravy sticks to the beans and doesn't run down through the fork. Bits and pieces of bacon or pork or brisket bark or something. Good texture, a bit hot though (and I know that sounds like a "duh" statement) meaning the beans kinda explode out of their skin a little too easily. Just a really nice smokey bean flavor, not a real good presence of Brown Sugar or Apple or Maple, just that nice smoked bean flavor from the good old days.
Mac and Cheese: Shell pasta with a very very "frothy" looking cheese, if I was going to pick a quick word to describe it. Could see some sort of seasoning that I assumed was black pepper. Cheese wasn't goopy (goopy is bad) or stringy (stringy is good) but it was just like a nice cheese sauce. Realized that it did have some stringy-ness to it as I got deeper. There is definitely a hint of a spice in there, it wasn't black pepper by my taste buds at the time anyway. Great texture, good buttery cheesy flavor, might have been baked a little but didn't look like it. All in all this is actually pretty great mac and cheese.
Cornbread: Looked pretty typical. Sorta had a top layer like it was all flaking off. Taste was typical, mild sweetness, cakey texture, little corn meal grains in there so its not completely cake like, good but nothing great.
5 Sauces. Sweet Table BBQ, Alabama White, Spicy BBQ, Asian Spiked, and Carolina Mop. Asian Spiked was hard to describe cause I dont think I've tasted it before, nothing really reminded me of any typical asian flavor like teriyaki or schezuan or soy. If anything it was more like a fruitier BBQ sauce but I couldn't tell ya what fruit. Alabama white was more mayo-like, not as many spices as I like to see, but actually tasted pretty good. Carolina MOP had a crazy amount of spices as it should, nice sweet vinegar with not a super hard bite to it with a little tiny bit of heat to it, very nice. Sweet Table BBQ was the type of sauce that just made me point at it like a proud papa. Excellent blend of spices and vinegar and sweetness.
I put a lot of thought into my rating. On one hand this place has some really really good BBQ. But it kind of comes down to if it is really really good authentic made with love BBQ. To me there was something about it that just tasted like it's a "follow the recipe and repeat" type of place. I could be super wrong but I feel like that's what I tasted. Thought about it a little more and I'd say it's a solid 4.9 so I give them a 5 star. read more