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| - My wife and I went to Union Pig and Chicken recently for dinner. After being thrilled by Salt of the Earth and Station Street Hot Dogs (both owned by the owners of UP&C) we were expecting another similar experience.
When walking into UP&C, I was immediately struck by its size. There are two long benches in UP&C and each seat about 24 people. Things brings about an interesting dining experience, you are literally sandwiched between other parties. Unfortunately this causes the tables to be quite loud and limits your ability to hear the person across from you.
On to the menu/food...
The menu itself is rather small. There are roughly 6 or so entree's to choose from. Most of the entrees are your standard BBQ fare (brisket, bbq chicken, fried chicken, ribs...). The entrees run somewhere between $12-18. The problem that you run into is that everything is a la carte. None of the single serving sides are included with the entrees. The next problem is that these single serving sides are on the expensive side ($5 for a mac and cheese side, $3 for cornbread, etc). This leads to a rather expensive dining experience, which in itself isn't really a problem if the food lives up to the price...
However, in my experience the food did not live up to the hype. I tried both the ribs and the brisket and found them both to be a little on the dry side, and surprisingly to be tougher than I expected them to be. To make up for this, I tried to add a little of the bbq sauce that they provide on the tables. Rookie mistake. The sauce really didn't add anything to the meats and instead was at the same time too vinegary and too watery. On the bright side, they clearly know what they are doing when smoking the meats. The brisket had a nice char layer and was smoked wonderfully. Hours later, my hands still smelled like smoke.
The sides we ordered we both acceptable, but really failed to make me feel like I was getting a good value. The cornbread was a little denser than I like and seemed to be vaguely sweet, but otherwise rather bland. The mac and cheese was pretty OK, but nothing that you couldn't get at a number of restaurants around the area.
The one area that UP&C shined was service. Our server was funny, attentive and very knowledgeable about the food. Without a doubt the best part of our meal.
Overall, I thought that UP&C was OK, but really made me think that I overpaid for what was a just a "pretty ok" meal. There wasn't anything that was particularly off putting, but there also wasn't anything particularly delightful either. It just kinda... was.
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