I stopped by here a couple of Fridays ago with my wife for dinner. We were downtown for the evening looking for a place to eat whenever I noticed that I had Pork & Beans bookmarked and so we decided to give it a try. We made reservations for 6:30 via the Yelp app and tried to waste some time but didn't do a good job of it and arrived at the restaurant at 6:10. Thankfully they weren't busy and we were able to immediately get a table. Pork and beans has an interesting look to it as there is a bar area in the front with a number of high top tables where we sat. Then behind that is the dining room which is separated from the bar by a chain "cage" with barbed wire on top. It's not as menacing sounding as it seems but looks odd whenever you get a glance of it.
For dinner on this evening my wife and I decided to split a bunch of meats which we often do at BBQ places. We ended up going with the pulled pork, pastrami pork belly and turkey for meats and then Mac and cheese and a beet salad as sides. Our order ended up taking a while to come out which was explained away by the fact that a huge table was being served before us. Since I worked in the restaurant industry at one point I understood how that went and my wife and I weren't in a hurry anyways. Once it finally did make it to the table the first meat that I ended up trying was the pastrami
Pork belly. It was super tender and pretty much melted in your mouth while having a nice pastrami spice blend on it. The next meat that I tried ended up being the turkey. While I thought it was flavorful including having a hint of smoke, I also thought it was dry. Oddly my wife seemed to think it was tender and moist. Were we eating the same thing? Haha. Last but not least for the meats was the pulled pork which was cooked nicely and also had the smoky flavor to it. In addition to trying all the meats plain I also tried them all with each of the four BBQ sauces that were on the table: classic, hot, tangy mustard and a seasonal. What was surprising about the sauces was that they were fairly viscous. Still they were all good with my favorites of the bunch being the sweet classic and also the tangy mustard. After all I am a sucker for a good Carolina mustard based BBQ. Surprisingly with all that I just said it wasn't the meats or the BBQ sauces that were the star of our meals and instead it was the sides. Our beat salad had an amazing dressing on it (possibly a caramel vinaigrette?) that gave the beets some richness while also adding some acidity. Not to be beaten the Mac and cheese was ooey gooey and quite decadent. If you head to Pork and Beans it is the one item I would completely recommend as it was delicious.
The bottom line for me is that I would head back here again in the future. While the space itself is hipster in what I found to be a weird sort of way, I really did enjoy the food that I had here, especially the Mac and cheese.