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| - My family decided to check out Union Pig & Chicken for fathers day since my Dad loves BBQ. My fiance and I are also BBQ foodies - we probably eat more BBQ than anything else, so we were excited to try a new place.
When we arrived I immediately fell in love with the interior decor. Although it is a bit dark, which is usually a crime to me, the beautiful "reclaimed" look of the walls really did it for me. The smells were wonderful and the food at everyones tables looked amazingly appetizing. That is about where I stopped enjoying the place though.
I ordered the 2 meat combo with Ribs and Brisket. My fiance ordered the Pork shoulder sandwich. We added an order of half fried chicken. Our sides were coleslaw, potato salad, and we each had a piece of cornbread. We figured that would be a good "tour" of the menu.
When the food arrived it looked wonderful. I'm not a fan of the metal lunch tray that it was served on (it felt too "fast-food" like to me), but the appearance of the food itself was quite appetizing.
I tried to brisket first and was shocked at how dry and salty it was. I ended up only eating a few bites because it was so salty and the dry rub on it had burnt to a crisp during the cooking process leaving a flavor and what had the texture of charred season salt behind.
My plan was to hide this with the BBQ sauce so I then tasted it. It was "mheh". It had a strong flavor of alcohol in it which I initially mistook for beer but found out later that it was whiskey. I'm not a fan of whiskey or bourbon BBQ sauce, and that was the ONLY option. Call me spoiled, but I think BBQ joints should offer more than one sauce. Throw a little Carolina in there, or a smoky sweet sauce, or something! But this sauce tasted like (in order), Alcohol (whiskey), vinegar, paprika, salt, then had a sweet BBQ finish. I ended up not using any.
My ribs were dry rubbed and charred. They were a little dry. BBQ sauce would have made up for it, but I didn't have any. The amount of meat on the bones was average.
The fried chicken was the highlight of the meal. It was cooked properly and moist. The breading was crispy and tasty. It wasn't as salty as everything else. I am glad we decided to order the chicken because it was really the only thing that I enjoyed.
The potato salad was just okay. It had a lot of herbs in it but was somehow almost bland. It was a mustard/vinegar based dressing with dill and maybe parsley in it. It was also served luke warm, which probably didn't help. I ended up taking it home and eating the left overs the next day and it was much better - which means it probably hadn't sat long enough to let the flavors meld and really compliment each other. It was also colder coming out of my fridge.
The corn bread was a hot mess. It was overdone, dry, and hard. It tasted like they used an entire stick of butter to make one piece... which made me wonder if we had a bad batch and rather than toss it they just basted it with butter to try to salvage it and served it anyhow. I would never have served that in my restaurant.
My Fiance said his pork shoulder sandwich was just okay. It was served on half of a sub (hoagie) bun - nothing fancy there. The pork shoulder was "too fatty" according to him. He doesn't like fatty pieces left on his meat, so any fat would have bothered him.
I also tried my sisters greens. They, again, were just okay. Very vinegary - and not much of a ham or bacon taste. Maybe they're vegetarian.
I also tried the mac and cheese and that was THE best dish of everything. Possibly the best mac and cheese I've ever had (although I don't eat mac and cheese very often - maybe once a year).
The coleslaw was really good as well - but it was just your standard cole slaw. Kind of reminded me of Kentucky Fried Chicken's slaw.
Service was pretty good - timely and polite. The prices were a little extreme - but that is only because the food was sub par. I'd gladly pay those prices for BBQ that was a little better.
We likely won't be returning to Union Pig and Chicken. Archie's BBQ in McHenry, Maryland (Deep Creek) reigns supreme as our favorite BBQ joint.
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