The line may be long, but the actual wait here is longer. It can be REALLY long when it's super-busy, which is reputably often. The process of actually ordering takes each person as long as a few minutes, even if they knew what they were ordering before they placed the order, since like everyplace in Williamsburg it's louder than a roomful of wailing banshees when it's busy. This Saturday evening around 7 PM it took us around twenty-five minutes to get our food, and we came in when there was almost no line at all. Shortly after we arrived until we left the line was about twice as long, though it felt to me sitting there with savory meat juices collecting on my hard-working fingers like it started moving faster once we sat down. No doubt the result of hallucinatory animal flesh vapors.
Kitchenwise, they are operating on what is essentially a multiple chafing-dish, heat lamp operation serving up various hot, smoked meats weighed by the pound in true Texas fashion, along with sides* and beverages**. Sodas and the like you can buy with your meats. There is a separate bar (without much of a wait) for alcohol. The dining format is what I've come to think of either as Texas Vietnamese or Medieval Style dining, with long communal tables (heavy wood this time) and communal sauces and communal getting squished and jabbed and poked and communal being interrogated by people waiting in the line re: what you've eaten. All in a good-natured fashion, of course, and ably tolerated by the folks who actually have to work here. God bless them. I wouldn't have lasted a lunch shift.
The menu is a chalk board, which may not list all the items actually in the hot food case. The menu will change while you wait. We got the last of the pork jowl. That's right, it was us. Also on offer when we went were brisket (which I hear they usually have), pulled pork, goose (whole and looking mighty fine), lamb breast, pork ribs, spicy sausage, and pork jowl. We opted for brisket, which was butter-soft and excellent for this area (though it would be merely very very good if we were trolling through the smoke pits of central Texas, sorry loves). The jowl was outstanding, though we got the very fatty end, so it mainly consisted of achingly-tender meat, fat and satisfyingly–blackened crispy nobbly bits. The goose, which I'm kicking myself for not having ordered just a leg of, looked amazing.
Sauces were middling-to-good. A spicy ketchup might have just been ketchup. The dark, red sauce was decently hot and suitable to be used in small amounts. The mustard found favor with others in our party, but to me it was too nose-clearingly hot to do anything but overwhelm the lusty, complex flavors of meltingly-soft dry rub meats. Not so the pickles and kraut, which are from the great Guss' Pickles, and are typically well-balanced, the half-sours in particular going great with the pork.
Prices were respectably fair for this kind of well-reared lovingly prepared meat, especially in the second most expensive city in America. $18/lb for brisket, pork, lamb, etc. Sausages were $4/a link, not terrible, but I'm thinking $3, guys. Goose was $32, but looked so intense a quarter-pound would likely suffice with other meats. Three of us split a half-pound of brisket, a half-pound of jowl, 2 sausages, and large sides of pickles and kraut and we were easily defeated, though we valiantly tried, packing in way more in than we truly needed. I even left with a paper-towel wrapped pickle which did not prove as hilarious later as I'd promised/hoped.
Total for food: ~ $37 dollars, not bad for this area and extremely reasonable when the quality of the meal is taken into account.
In the end, is it trendy? Yes. Is it overpriced? For the food and location, no. For the prestige whisky list? Yes. Should you care? Not really. The people always have need for well smoked meats!
Is it worth it?
Hell yeah. Do yourself a favor and avoid spending twice or three times as much for quality meat when in Williamsburg and hunker down before smoky flavor as honest and unpretentious as any classic barbecue shack in the South, doled out by a bare bones crew as friendly one you'd expect at same.
*On sides : Skip fattening, gullet-stuffing potato salad (I'm sure it's good, but who cares?) and likewise filling and overpriced-to-boot burnt ends baked beans (they're good, but you ought not to charge $5 and a quarter for what is essentially a trendy chef's trick, just make your own at home). Skip also crisps, which are somehow bagged chips (ours got left in the entrance to Barcade). Just pile on that meat, grab a few rolls and don't forget pickles and kraut.
**On beverages : boasting what they claim in great swirly letters as "the Best American Whisky list in New York City" (caps theirs, note also spelling of whisky), You can expect to pay about a quarter to half the price of a bottle of a glass of these whiskeys, which is some wine-level markup nonsense. Opt instead for pints, which cost much closer to normal, human levels, and gallons, which, well you know the score. Whisky or whiskey doesn't really agree with barbecue (or barbeque) anyway, it's meant to be drunk before and after. Stick to water or beer. Or get one of those syrupy sodas people swear by (although I noticed a suspicious, almost blasphemous lack of Big Red on what is essentially a Texas barbecue menu gussied up with a handful of contemporary and extra-regional variations).
Oh, and pictures will be posted next time we go. Camera died.
