I am picky about BBQ (thank you Captain Obvious) but have to say we have hit on another really good quality BBQ restaurant. The Flyin' Pig was everything I needed it to be -- GREAT service, a wide variety of smoked meats, a good beer assortment, ample portions cooked well, and decent prices.
First, the location.... in a suburban strip mall with a grocery store, doctors' offices, and several other restaurants (including 21 Spoons, which I have also reviewed -- great fine dining!) but the parking lot was a challenge. Getting inside, we were seated immediately. There are about 10 TV sets going with sports, not intrusive, and nice music playing from the past couple of decades.
Despite what we learned was a short staff (one staffer went home unexpectedly just before we got there) we never felt rushed or neglected. Friendly genuine interactions with our server as well as another server who backed ours up bringing food from the kitchen.
Food -- we ordered hush puppies that came with choice of honey butter or red pepper jelly. We got both sauces without any hesitation. The hushpups were well cooked, nice crust on the outside and soft in the middle. The pepper jelly was excellent (if a bit spicy for my wife) and the honey butter melted easily into the cornbread. Good start. I ordered a side salad to go with my main, which came out early (which is great.) A well thought out mix of greens, with generous amounts of veggies and cheese and croutons and corn (nice touch) and a honey lime vinaigrette I want to try to clone. Before I could woof down more than half the salad, our mains arrived. Wife got a brisket burnt ends sandwich and onion straws. The burnt ends were sweet-finished, like they had been rolled in honey as part of the prep and then left in a skillet. Nice flavor, would be too sweet IMHO if eaten alone but great on a sandwich. What I cannot understand is how a barbecue joint can serve brisket burnt ends but not serve brisket. My suspicion is that they buy the burnt ends and smoke them on premises, but I have nothing more than my logic to support this idea. Still, with pork and chicken and burnt ends on the menu, this was a noticed hole in the offerings. The onion straws were A MAZ ING -- crumb coat and perfectly cooked, could have been brought to the table a tad warmer. My wife declared them to be the best onion rings/straws in Richmond. Long live the king!
I ordered the Bruce, which is a pulled pork BBQ sandwich and five wings with choice of sauce (nine sauces, four dips to select from) and choice of smoked wings or grilled smoked wings. I chose grilled smoked wings in spicy garlic. The wings were meaty with maybe a touch too much smoke (any further and I would have said bitter, but these were still in the tasty range), the garlic reasonable but not overpowering, and the heat level that was purportedly in the mid range was nicely spicy. The star of this portion of the meal was the blue cheese sauce for dipping.... it had chunks of green-veined blue in it that were big enough to pull out with a fork and spread on the wings for a really great tang. Little things like that make a nice meal even more memorable. But back to the pork sandwich. The sandwich, served I believe on a potato roll which made me doubt whether it was going to be able to hold up, was both sturdy and generous with the meat. Nice pork, good smoke flavor, smoke ring apparent on select pieces. Add to this a choice of two table sauces (sweet or spicy, and you know I went spicy) and this was a very good restaurant sandwich.
With two teas and tax, the bill for all this was $58. Not at all bad, I think. Put this one on your Que rotation, near the top of the list. read more