You order at the register and they bring the food to your table, which is common in BBQ joints. Sauceman's has a couple of gimmicks on the menu: one is a "Big Squeal" sandwich, which is chopped pork between two oversized slabs of hush puppy. This is better in concept than in execution. Take a look at this picture:
The Big Squeal sandwich is shown on the left. First of all, it's overloaded with meat, and second, the "bun" doesn't hold together so you can eat it sandwich-style. I ended up eating both the meat and the "bun" with a fork; it was a huge mess. Another gimmick that occurs when you order the Big Squeal is that a chosen member of staff has to squeal like a pig. I asked them to omit this step. They did so.
I also ordered a tray, which in NC BBQ places is a smaller portion than a plate; Sauceman's gives you very generous portions, the tray was fully as large as a plate portion other restaurants serve. The meat portion on the Big Squeal was generous, too, as I have mentioned. The hush puppies were soft and tasted more like turkey stuffing than true hush puppies.
The pork barbecue is served "wet," which means that it has Lexington-style "dip" ladled on it before it is served. This makes for a very moist barbecue, but tends to mask the meat and smoke flavor with vinegar. Some Lexington BBQ places will offer either "wet" or "dry" barbecue, but Sauceman's only goes with wet, apparently. The meat was tasty and had a mix of outside brown and inside white.
For those who are into food challenges, Sauceman's has the Clark Griswald: "2.5lbs of our famous Queen City BBQ sandwiched between 2 buns, served with your choice of slaw, hushpuppies, and one side. Eat it all in 30 minutes or less and it's on us! We'll even put your picture up on the wall." Two and a half pounds of barbecue is quite a lot, actually. I can usually polish off a pound at a sitting (with buns), but I don't think I could handle two and a half pounds.
On the down side, I had to wipe my own table off when I sat down, staff isn't alert about busing/cleaning tables. A fly hovered around while I ate, which can happen anywhere, but detracted from the meal; I thought that staff would bring refills, but learned that I had to self-serve on those (would have been nice to have been told when I ordered).
On the up side, the staff were friendly and they even brought around free samples of smoked turkey, which was quite good; I liked it even better than the pork. It would make a good sandwich (not between hush puppy buns, however).
I'll give Sauceman's Queen City BBQ a 3 on my 5-scale of barbecue restaurant ratings: 3 out of 5: average; reasonably good food, moderate effort by staff/management.
2 comments:
"Squeal like a pig"? Good grief. What do they think this is, "Deliverance"?
@Borepatch: one of the reasons that chopped BBQ is popular in NC is because dental hygiene used to be/often still is/sadly lacking, so the toothless redneck from Deliverance could eat the BBQ here with no problem. Hopefully he would refrain from the sodomy stuff, though.
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