Smoke’n Dudes BBQ

This place used to be Rude hawgs BBQ. My fiancé and I loved their ribs and were so sad to see them go out of business. A few months later Smoke n’ Dudes appeared in it’s place. Wednesday nights they feature an all you can eat pig roast luau for $ 9.99. If you want ribs with the meal it is $ 14.99. The meal includes meat from the freshly roasted swine, jerk chicken, pineapple stuffing, cole slaw, a roll, and potato salad. All that food for a small price? I had to check it out especially since the main attraction was PORK!
Now I must first state that my fiancé and I are rib snobs. We know our pork! We have attented many rib festivals and cook offs and dabble in our own grilling of the snouty beast. So when it comes to ribs we know what we like and we like good meaty ribs with a nice slathering of flavorful sauce, not too sweet or overpowering just enought to get your lips a smackin.
We walked into Smoke n’ Dudes and were welcomed by a roasted pig wearing sunglasses. The «Luau» consisted of a few leis draped over coat hooks and of course the pig in the shades. We ordered the all u can eat with ribs. You could have slaughtered a whole pig and roasted it in the time we waited for out meal. Just so people know, they use plastic utensils here — no silver stuff which may offend some high class foodies-​not me. I was disapointed in the wait but happy to see a meal placed in front of me that was bigger than my grandmother’s Thanksgiving dinner platters. Nice portions of everything!
Now for the important stuff: The ribs were good. Not fabulous, not sucky, just good. The apple barbecue sauce was deliciously tangy and the meat was cooked perfectly. I did not think the actual meat was good quality meat but hey thats what you get for the price, I guess. I was expecting meatier ribs. The pulled pork from the pig was a little greasy but good greasy. My fiancé piled his on his roll and topped it with cole slaw and sauce… YUM! The sides were ok. The cole slaw and stuffing were good but you really don’t need all these sides when there is «all you can eat» pork involved.
Another disapointment, the service. Our waitress was slow and forgot to check on us. She left our finished plates and piles of napkins (you go thru a lot of napkins when eating bbq) on the table. She was not polite at all. We did not even get a «thank you, have a good night» when she brought back my change. I ordered the «award winning» rum raisin bread pudding to go. It is one solid brick of custardy bread. I love rum. Those of you who do not know me, I am known in the geocaching world as RumGirl. The rum sauce tastes like someone poured cheap alcohol over some sticky bun icing. We really were looking forword to discovering that the best ribs in south jersey were just minutes from our home. Unfortunately they were just mediocre. I give it 3 out of 5 oinks. I mean, stars.