My wife and I have been vacationing in the midwest for the past week. We were passing through the area when we needed to find a place for lunch. My wife had mentioned a BBQ place in a nearby city that she found in a vacation guide, but had since forgotten the name of, so I pulled up my Yelp app and punched in barbecue. This place came up near the top of the list, and was extremely well rated, so I figured it must be a good one. It was rated even higher on Google and Facebook, so they must be doing something right, right?
First, the address that is on Yelp took us to the middle of a housing neighborhood near a correctional facility. That was our first warning to go back to the hotel instead. Second, we saw a great blue heron just sitting by the side of the road as traffic went by, as opposed to hiding or flying as we normally see them. That was our second warning... I searched Google Maps for the name of this place, and it comes up with a different area than the Yelp address (which went through Google maps, no less) had taken us to, though the actual address looked like it was identical to the one I had previously gotten from Yelp... go figure. I told my wife and our friend going with us that if the new directions weren't taking us there, we'd just go back to the hotel.
Anyway, we made it. I kind of wish we hadn't. We were waiting about 5 minutes before we got seated by a nice young lady. The waitress came a few minutes later to take drink orders (Pepsi products, blech) but hadn't handed us menus. Those came after a while longer. The waitress didn't small talk us at all, she was almost gone before we had finished talking. In fact at one point I was going to ask where the bathroom was but she had already zipped away fast.
My wife ordered a BYO mac and cheese with pulled chicken and baked beans. When she got it, the chicken was in chunks, not pulled, and she couldn't eat much of it as she couldn't eat the chicken chunks as they were too big to chew. She had also gotten the coleslaw, but with green peppers and bell peppers in it, it was completely inedible.
Our friend ordered a 1 meat combo with brisket, while I ordered the one meat combo with ribs (pictured). The rest of our order was the same. We got mac and cheese, cornbread casserole, and fried biscuits with apple butter.
Our friend liked his brisket but commented that it was a little too gristley. To me, it looked very fatty, but it still looked better than what I got.
My mac and cheese was very average. Not bad, not great. It tasted like it was out of a box. The fried biscuits were good but I wouldn't have called them biscuits. At a Chinese buffet, they would be considered cinnamon sugar dough balls. They were actually better without the apple butter. The cornbread casserole was really good in my opinion (the only reason I'm giving 2 stars instead of 1). The ribs, however, were small, tough, overcooked, and possibly left over from a previous day. They were awful, and rank among the top 5 worst ribs I've ever had. I had debated not getting them. I need to stick with my gut more often.
At one point the waitress zipped by, asking if everything was ok. Our friend quickly commented "yeah!" and zip! the waitress was gone! That was a rather unfortunate time for me to be chewing on some food.
I ended up finishing my wife's BYO mac and cheese which was better than the plain mac but not by much. I didn't end up completely finishing anything, a rarity for me.
The waitress brought refills in to go cups, before we had even gotten the check, and she never asked if we wanted dessert, which we had been considering, but I'll never know how their peanut butter pie is because we never got the chance to order it. We felt very rushed out of there, and it wasn't even busy. Oh well, we now know not to ever go back.