Blowin’ Smoke BBQ: Better if you’re hammered

My most recent visit to Blowin’ Smoke was my second visit and I convinced four other people to join me because I swore the BBQ was amazing. The first time I ate here was about three months ago and I was a little drunk when I arrived.

I tried to duplicate this experience not only for me but for my four friends. I didn’t succeed.

And it would have been ok if just my food wasn’t as good as I remember, but everyone had separate complaints and I don’t think anyone finished their food.

To start, the night was beautiful and we had all planned on eating outside. When I arrived, the band was playing so loud that I doubted we would hear each other talk if we ate outside, so we moved the party inside.

The first time I ate here, there was an ambiance of rocker cool. We sat outside, heard good blues, ate BBQ and drank beer. This time, we were inside and there were dressed up toddlers running the place.

I then found out the restaurant was hosting three separate wedding parties that evening.

Despite that, the meal started out well. We had a personable waiter and we ordered some fried pickles and fried mushroom appetizers.

Fried Pickles

For one, I prefer pickle chips to spears, but that’s just me, so for the pickle aficionados out there, they serve spears here. The mushrooms were tasteless but the dipping sauces helped fix that.

BBQ Chicken & Black-eyed pea cake

For my meal, I ordered the BBQ chicken breast and added a black-eyed pea cake to it. Last time, I ordered the same thing and it was one of my best meals in Savannah. This time, it was pretty bad. The chicken was dry and burnt and the BBQ sauce wasn’t good. The black-eyed pea cake was dry and too many onions dominated the coleslaw. In addition, the French fries were soggy. But I kept my mouth shut and waited for input from my dinner companions.

Mike had brisket and fried okra. He said the BBQ sauce on the brisket tasted watery and I tasted his and he was right. His fried okra also was unimpressive.

Mike's BBQ Brisket

Ingela's Chicken Wrap

Ingela had the chicken wrap and had the same soggy French fry issue and the wrap was mediocre.

Allison had the pulled pork sandwich and didn’t like the potato salad at all and she also didn’t finish her sandwich.

Allison's BBQ Pork Sandwich

Patricia our poor vegetarian had the black-eyed pea sandwich and she also didn’t like her coleslaw because of my oniony observation and said her black eyed pea cake was “fine.”

Patricia's Black-eyed Pea Cake Sandwich

Our table was a mixture of Yankees, Southerners and a Midwesterner. We all have different ideas about BBQ and though some BBQ rivalry exists, our geographic notions of BBQ did not affect our response to this meal. Blowin’ Smoke did just blow smoke and nothing else.

So far, the best BBQ I’ve had in Savannah was Wiley’s Championship BBQ on the way to Tybee Island. It’s cheaper, the food is better, and there is no live music competing for your conversation.