Famous Dave’s Barbeque

Stopped by recently. It had been awhile since last visit. We were seated. After 10 minutes and several of the wait staff walking by and ignoring us we left. Not very impressed.

Had the brisket and catfish. Both were perfect and delicious. The sauce for the catfish was outstanding, a southwest style tartar sauce. Jalapeño mac and cheese was tasty, excellent Cole slaw. The cornbread muffin was hot and moist. Also had the salmon stuff for appetizer, it was great. Service was superb. Can’t ask for much more!

The smell alone welcomes you and has you drooling for some BBQ. The staff was friendly and wait times were minimum to none. The menu has multiple options to satisfy all taste buds. I personally got the Hickory Chicken Sandwich. The cheese was so perfectly melted on the expertly grilled chicken topped with two pieces of melt in your mouth bacon all inside fresh toasted square buns. I added their popular BBQ sauce. De.lish.ous.

Burnt ends! This place was great all around! The atmosphere, wait staff and food. Including the banana pudding. The nachos were so good! I can’t rave enough, so I will close by saying … I’m going home in a food coma. Numnums!!!

Great food even better BBQ sauces. My favorite thing here is the corn muffins. The check out girls for to go are dry and not friendly. I’m sure the waitresses are nice as they usually are when we eat in.

Second time eating here. Both experience great. last time I had the Burnt Ends sandwich platter at lunch. Tonight at dinner, I had the Ribs and Ends Dinner.
The burnt ends were awesome both times. Nice bark, very tender and a tight spicy/​sweet BBQ sauce perfectly glazing the delectable morsels.
The St Louis Ribs (¹⁄₃ rack — 4 bones) were perfectly done. Tender, but requiring a little pull of the teeth to come off the bone. Nice smoke ring and great smoky taste. The dry rub had just the right bit of heat, salt, sweet and tang. Soooooo good. Like eating at Bubaloos in Orlando all over again. In the 2 trips, I’ve experienced 5 different sides. The fries are a nice thick steak fry wedge. Very crisp and tasty on the outside and warm and almost creamy inside. Their «Wilbur Beans» are one of the best baked beans I have eaten in a long time. Sweet and slightly spicy liquor that has cooked down to a pleasant thickness. Not too dry, not a runny mess. The Firecracker Beans are a fresh, small, tender bean sauteed with onion and bacon. Not overcooked (like a lot of southern BBQ places, because that’s the way southerners like them), so they have a good bite and still look green. The cole slaw is top notch. Crisp, tangy and a little sweet and creamy. The collard greens? THE TRUTH.
My only complaint about the food was that the corn bread is more of a corn muffin that seemed suspiciously like it was made from Jiffy box mix. It is baked in a muffin paper. When I tried to peel the paper of the bread, the crown above the cup pulled off and the remainder in the cup crumbled to dry pieces rather than coming out. not much flavor either. I also had one of their specialty drinks. Dave’s Smoky Tea. basically their version of a Long Island. Pretty strong and pretty tasty.
Service-​wise, «Famous Jamie» was a little scattered. She did have a ten top next to us, but she also had 2 runners working her station. She was a little inattentive. Guess the 10 top was her bet for a good tip. The runner brought our food out and proceeded to put a bowl of fries on the ten-​top table as my wife remarked how we had order a full ten minutes before them. Then she noticed it was our food. She said something to the runner and kept an eagle eye to make sure no one touched her fries. Runner must not have paid attention to table numbers or the fact that she had two meals for a ten-​top. One other thing. jackie had liked my Burnt Ends so much when she had tasted them the first time we were here that she ordered an appetizer of them with the side of fries as her meal. the Ends are supposed to be served with pickled red onions and some pickle and pepper chips. I told Famous Jamie not to have them put on the onions. Jackie DOES NOT like onions. (She thanked me for thinking of it) So we should have gotten Ends and Pickles. Nope. Ends with a PILE of tobacco onions! Good for me, I took them off the plate and they were great. Bad for Jackie. She doesn’t like the taste of onions and there was a faint amount of that. She did not want to return them and have to wait though. But, someone freaked up. Jamie or kitchen, we don’t know.
Anyway, still the best BBQ in town for me so far. Deets can pound cold coals and Shorty’s is just meh. I’ll try some others if I hear good things, but Famous Dave’s will be tough to beat.

My all time favorite BBQ! Love their St. Louis style ribs & buffalo wings, but their burnt ends are «PHENOMENAL!» They have a really good house salad also. Their ranch & blue cheese salad dressings are among some of my favorites, but beware, they are heavy on the dill, which I «LOVE!» Their other sides will not disappoint either. Restaurant is always clean & service is good as well. :-))

Me and my pals were craving meat for my birthday so we thought why not come here for lunch! We ended up indulging in the lunch menu so the prices were reasonable.
I ended up getting the two meats for one lunch deal and got the Texas Brisket the seasoned catfish with a corn muffin and jalapeño macaroni and cheese. Awesome meal for around 9 bucks! My meat was juicy and tasty. Great time!

My husband and I went on a Friday night. We were seated rather quickly and we got our food in a timely manner. The greeters, waitstaff, and kitchen crew who brought our food were very friendly and professional considering how busy they were. Our food was delicious!

Loved there bbq nachos… All my food was great and I really enjoyed the sauces. Server was alright. .it was incredibly busy so I’m not going to be to harsh but strictly food wise. .I thought it was great.

This is great BBQ, they have all the classics. Try the burnt ends as an appetizer or the catfish if it’s in season.

This review is in response to a situation that happened a while back but I feel it should be noted for your own safety. My truck was broken into at 2 in the afternoon at this place. I found out from a shift manager that another car had been broken into a week before and the manager was shot taking the night deposit to the bank. the manager said they had the robbers recorded but couldn’t make out the license plate. I emailed the owner of this restaurant to explain the situation and to suggest he update his cameras and he emailed back and basically said he could care less about the break ins and offered no refund for the 100.00 I just spent in his restaurant. I thought afterwords that this was undoubtedly an inside job, it is not safe taking your family here and we have not been back since.

The food is BBQ. Its a very easy thing to do, exspecially as they don’t smoke they’re meat they grill it. This place is fine for people on the go or people with family’s. They’re staff has always been kind and courteous making you feel welcome.
EDIT: was informed the food is actually smoked. Though for being smoked it sure is lacking that smoked taste.

Yo, Unilocal,when are you going to let us give half stars? This place is a solid 2.5 stars, definitely not a 2, possibly a 3 on a good day, but overall a solid 2.5 stars. I do give them props for the multiple sauces and for interesting décor, but as far as the barbeque goes… well folks… it is definitely nothing like Texas barbeque; it’s a bit of a letdown. Also, I felt very rushed when eating here, which is probably my number one pet peeve. I can deal with marginal food, but I can’t deal with being rushed, especially when I’m dropping about $ 40 bucks for the two of us.

Sure this is a chain restaurant, but I love it! I didn’t realize how much I liked this place until I went to a different BBQ place.
They have a family platter that is a great price (~$ 56 and feeds ~4−6 people) and gives you a wide variety of food! The ribs are flavorful and definitely worth it!
I love their sides so much that it’s always hard to choose which ones we want to get! Their mac and cheese is pretty good and has a little kick to it (they put jalapeño in it. If you’re looking for mac and cheese for kids, they offer regular mac and cheese on the kids menu). The baked beans, coleslaw, and green beans compliment the ribs well!
I also love that they have the sauces right there at the table so that you can slather on as much as you like! They also have a variety of different ones from sweet to spicy.
As for appetizers, I’m always a fan of nachos. Here you can put pulled chicken, pork or brisket on you nachos which is different from other places.

So I’ve learned with Unilocal to take reviews with a grain of salt… u still have to judge for yourself. Well tonight I went to Famous Daves thinking I was gonna be let down. Now, mind u I wasn’t blown away but I was pleasantly surprised.
I had the sandwich with the brisket and sausage. The brisket was tender and moist, not half bad. The sausage was just average. The only thing i didn’t care for was the pickles, they are sweet pickles not my favorite, but that’s a me problem. One of my favorite things is the chips they make there, nice and crispy. They taste really good. I also had a side of the mac and cheese which was alright nothing special but not bad either. My biggest complaint was the service everything took forever, drinks, ordering, refills, just really slow and the waitress did not pay much attention to us. Overall not bad, I will go back some day and try some of them other items.

Cajun, N’Awlins and old school Rick and Roll music wafts along with the smell of great barbecue. Checkered cloth table covers. This is the original Famous Dave’s, now a chain, but this is the home of their award-​winning food. The service was great, and the food was really good. I am not a fan of St. Louis style spareribs generally but this place made me a convert because they were meaty and not really fatty. The Texas brisket was good enough to carry its weight in the Lone Star State, and the sides were all great.

The real question here is how did Dave get so Famous with food like this?
Let’s start with the positives because there are a few. The service was very good. Our wait tress was never to far away for a refill or to see how our meals were. Portion sizes for the price were not bad at all. My meal was around $ 11 and it was enough either to feel bloated from BBQ for the day or to have lunch for tomorrow.
Ok, now that we have the positives on to the rest of the experience. I ordered the beef brisket, which according to the menu had been roasted for 8 whole hours. I beg to differ. Great brisket falls apart when you put your knife near it; good brisket is tender and falls apart with little effort. Famous Dave’s should hand out a meat cleaver to get this stuff apart. Tough and bland is the best way to describe the brisket at Famous Daves. Really disappointing.
One of my favorite things about good BBQ joints is the variety of different sauces. Famous Daves certainly provides a variety, 6 I think in all. Unfortunately you can barely tell a difference between any of them.
The sides were fine, nothing good nothing bad. Overall Famous Dave’s was really disappointing.

I get my favorite BBQ from a street vendor here in Atlanta but since I was away I had to seek elsewhere. To my surprise, the BBQ here was actually pretty good. I had to ask for extra sauce which was no biggie. I got the beef brisket sandwich, potato salad, onion rings and cornbread. I wish the beef brisket would have been pulled beef brisket instead of rectangular chunks. However, It was all good but of course not as good as my favorite street vendor.
The customer service here was also really good BUT some of the items we got were on their lunch menu which is hidden on the back of the menu. I feel like the girl who took our order could have told us about the hidden lunch menu. That kind of upset me. because a lot of the items we got were on the lunch menu for a lower price. Oh well!

2.5 stars.
Without a doubt, ribs and the like are things I simply have to be in the mood for, hence my frequenting barbeque joints a whopping three or so times in any given year.
Enter Famous Dave’s Barbeque (FDB.)
In all honesty, I was wavering between FDB and Shorty’s (in which case I would be supporting a local establishment) as they are both located on Monroe but decided with the former. As a caveat, this place is not meant for indecisive eaters. I personally had a hard time deciding what to order before finally settling for the Feast For 2 – 3 to split with my parents. Portion sizes are ample for the small appetites, like myself, but taste-​wise, it’s a whole different story.
Items that were presented (i.e. served on a garbage can lid) are as follow…
–Cornbread: absolutely moist and the ultimate comfort food if you ask me
–Ribs: lip-​smackingly delicious — hands down the only thing you go to FDB for
–Chicken: rotisserie style but sinewy and completely devoid of flavor
–Beef brisket: extra lean and succulent — just the way I like them
–Corn on the cob: meh
–Fries: fried to perfection but lacking salt
–Coleslaw: I believe KFC makes better coleslaw
–Smashed sweet potatoes: too buttered up for my liking
Now, I’ve heard spectacular things about the variety of sauces — all five of them — but frankly speaking, I could not fully differentiate one from the other. To me, each sauce was the ‘Rich and Sassy’ sauce itself, except sweeter (‘Sweet and Zesty’) or spicier (‘Texas Pit’) or spiciest (‘Devil’s Spit’) or mustardy (‘Georgia Mustard.’) Take home message: they all tasted, more or less, the same.
So, no, I don’t see the hype with FDB. At all.