Mark T.
Yelp
This is the place I choose to celebrate my 23rd birthday with a couple friends. Got off to a terrific start, but unfortunately, the awesomeness did not carry through my whole experience.
Because of some logistics, I got here around an hour before we had agreed to meet, so I grabbed a seat at the bar. I ordered an Old Fashioned, and some Pork Buns.
The Old Fashioned was very strong. If you are not a fan of whiskey, then this one is definitely not for you. The drink was made with Bulleit, which I am not a fan of... however, to his credit, the bartender did give me a choice, I just told him "your preference".
Pork Buns were spectacular all around, but be warned, there are jalapeños in there, so they come with quite a kick! Anyways, the pork belly was great, I liked that they were tender enough to melt in your mouth, but also preserved some of that friend/grilled flavor. The sauce was delightfully savory, and tangy, rather than a run-of-the-mill saccharine BBQ sauce. The vegetable slaw added a wonderful crunch. I devoured these with great joy.
Bar service was pretty nice, although I must say before 5:30 the bar was close to capacity, but there was only one bartender. The crowd wasn't too demanding, and service was relatively quick considering there was one bartender running the show. Not to worry, It wasn't one person the whole night, as two more came in at 5:30.
Fast forward a little bit, my friends are all here and we are ordering food!
For an appetizer, we ordered the chicken wings. These were middle-of-the-road. They were cooked pretty well, and they had a great amount of BBQ sauce on them, enough to add flavor, not so much that you need 32 napkins to clean up afterward. My critique here is that the bleu cheese was extremely chunky. Because of how everything was plated, I ended up just grabbing a rather large piece of bleu cheese. Let me tell you... bleu cheese is great with wings or celery, but not on its own!
Then came the pulled pork sandwich... after the pork buns, I was excited to try this! I was expecting the same range of flavors, with softness and crunch, sugar and spice, and everything nice... alas, I was denied. There were several things that caused this break-down. First, the cabbage slaw did not add any noticeable crunch. Not only was it not crunchy, there wasn't very much of it either. The pulled pork was overcooked and rather dry, desperately needing some more sauce. On a positive note, the bread was very pleasant! The curly fries were delicious too, cooked and seasoned to absolute perfection.
Then, there's the grand finale of the ice cream sandwich, which we split amongst the table. This one was also middle of the road. While there was some peanut-y sauce and candied peanuts, the ice cream didn't read as peanut butter to me, nor did I get a heavy reading on salted caramel. I should mention that I didn't see this listing on the dessert menu (server just told us "ice cream sandwich"), but I would hope to be able to pick up on it.
Overall service was nice and fairly attentive, although as it got a little later in the evening, it took a little while to get the food out, quite a bit longer than it took the pork buns... but then again, two of my friends ordered burgers, and those take a bit to cook.
It was the baos that showed me this places potential, which was why the sandwich was such a disappointment. But, they also showed what it is capable of, and that it could have just been a couple misfires. This said, I look forward to returning at some point and giving them another shot!