Brown's BBQ

I'm always up for trying some new BBQ because you never know it could be great. Yeah, I had some God awful shit that people actually charge for a taste of their heavenly grub... Or at least that's what their friends and family told them and convinced them to make it a business out of it. At first, making it at home and catering for house parties, bars or what not... To opening a brick and mortar spot. Kinda like how Fox Bros got their start. And what Brown's here seemed to have done as well. The only difference is that catering has set dates, times and events. You know exactly how much you need to make and for how many people. In a resto setting, the catering routine is out the door. You have to consistently have good product all day long, everyday, and every week. This is the weakness of this joint, it seems like they're still stuck on the catering mindset to make a huge pile of stuff and let it sit until the order comes in. Whatever is not used that day, it looks like it is used the rest of the week. We all know this is how not to serve great BBQ. It has to be prepared fresh everyday which means early and long hours of tending to the fire and meats.

Starting a brick and mortar BBQ joint is great for the local hood. It's a lot of hard work and long hours but the customer doesn't care about that except for good food. Let's take a bite and sample a few things here and see how they compare in a town with some exceptional BBQ.


Pulled pork sandwich with sweet onion BBQ sauce on the side and sweet potato souffle. The bun was nice. The rest, not so much. It's a decent heaping of pulled pork but that doesn't matter if it tastes like crap. The pork just tasted old and flavorless. How do you make pork tasteless? If you boil bacon, it still taste like bacon... Well, maybe not but it is a French technique to render some fat before sauteing, nevermind. I always get the sauce on the side because that's the only way to see how their meats stand alone. Now, you know why so many bad BBQ joints drown their meats in sauce. Let's not forget about the sweet potato souffle... The ice COLD souffle. This was basically canned sweet potato baby food mush with no seasoning. It was not a souffle and watery beyond belief. Gerber even laughs at them.


3 Meat Combo w/ 2 sides (green beans and mac & cheese). Does this look like a $15 plate worth of food? Remind you that this is a regular size picnic paper plate. The sides and sauce took up about 55% of the real estate. 2 wings, a half a rib bits and a couple shavings of "sliced" brisket. If I balled it up in my hands it would be the size of a golf ball. The wings were average which were edible but smoked they were not. The rib bits were hard, rubbery and lacked any smoke flavor whatsoever, this would be something you feed a dog after everyone has had their fill of the good parts. The brisket, oh, the "brisket" was absolutely ghastly, shitty fucked up slices and bits of dismal meat, no bark, no smoke, no flavor, no taste with hard pieces of fat that showed evidence of being boiled. This had all the tale tell signs of left over meat that sat around for days and they tried to reanimate it by soaking/poaching it in some type of liquid. They might as well use Liquid Plumber, at least I wouldn't have to suffer long. I wouldn't even serve this slop in a prison... Shit, I had better food in County. Almost makes me want to get arrested right now just to get a decent meal and for free. I kid, I kid. The greens bean were straight outta a can and into the microwave, you can actually taste the metal lining. The mac & cheese was powdered cheese mixed with leftover liquid funk from the green bean can. Just terrible. Kraft is sounding good right about now.


Cornbread muffin with jalapeno. Gives sawdust a whole new meaning, I stuck the fork in the really hard outter crust layer, when it broke apart, the innards spilled out like the sands of an hour glass. The jalapeno bits did nothing to enhance the staleness. It needed everything, like salt, sugar, butter, lard, buttermilk, egg, a new recipe... And not one from a blue and white little box. This was possibly the worst cornbread muffin I have ever tasted.


With a menu like this, you would expect a little more passion and flavor, especially, when they're charging $15 a plate. Listening to the table behind me proved that my order was not just a fluke... They got the 4 meat sampler to share at $17 plus and an extra $2.50 shared plate charge. Their portion was 1% larger than mine and they were outta there within 10 minutes. You could see the disappointment on their faces and mine wasn't far behind but I was more in a hysterical mood when I visually and orally sampled this specimen.

The service was very friendly and polite but they have a long ways to go to running a flavorful and consistent restaurant or just go back to what they supposedly do best, catering for kids birthday parties. Brown's BBQ is aptly named, everything was brown and looked eerily like something else that is brown and swimming in liquid.

All pump, no squirt.

No Rating.

2148 Johnson Ferry Rd NE
Atlanta, GA 30319

(770) 986-9450

http://brownsbbqandcatering.com/