Barbecue Mafia — Restaurant in Brisbane City

What is clear about Barbecue Mafia is that team clearly cares about their food and really are trying. The meat that they serve has to be properly marinated and seasoned and carefully smoked for ages in order to be ready for service.

What is unfortunate is that fact that the care and quality of the food is let down by (what looks like) a disorganised kitchen and frantic service. The reviews of their Sandgate store that are approx. a week older than this review now make sense.

We waited 1hour 20mins for our food. The couple next to us waited 1.5 hours. We were given no indication as to a wait time that long either.

When you're waiting nearly 1.5 hours for food, it sullies the experience and no food will be hyped enough or good enough to make up for the wait. That being said, there seems to be a sweet spot, between 7.20pm and 7.45pm where customers who ordered in that time frame were seemingly served in 20 minutes. Be mindful that the restaurant closes at 8pm.

The Birria Tacos themselves were literally tasteless. The broth was nice. At $9 per taco, I was expecting a bit more. Understandably, Birria tacos require a fair few ingredients, many of which are difficult to source in Australia. But what we ate was not worth $9 per taco.

The Brisket Loaded Fries were alright. The brisket itself was tender and flavourful and the sweet, tangy BBQ sauce carried the dish. The serving size was decent, but the guacamole was starting to go brown when we got the dish.

All in all, absolutely not worth the wait. It's hard to fathom that dishes where the main components are cooked all day take this long to put assemble. You'd be better of spending your time and money at other American style BBQ restaurants which offer better value and don't have you waiting ages for your food. I sincerely hope the team employs a hospitality consultant (or similar) to help them streamline and make their kitchen operations...

After making a reservation at the Mafia’s pop-up at the Sandgate Bowls Club for 7:00, my partner & I showed up 20 minutes early to have a drink before dinner. When we arrived, we placed our food order, thinking it would be busy and might take a while to get our food. We were told before ordering that it would be an hour wait for food. No problem. We ordered and grabbed a couple of beers. No tables were available for us despite the fact that we’d made a reservation. We waited around for a few minutes until a table was vacated. No one to be found to actually clean the table for us, so we cleaned it ourselves with napkins and hand sanitiser. An hour and a half later, I went to enquire about our order, only to be told that the kitchen had run out of food and they had nothing to give us (or another dozen or so customers that were waiting, still oblivious to the fact that they were going to miss out as well). They didn’t bother to tell us when exactly they were going to tell us the bad news. Staff at the front were friendly enough and offered a refund which we took because we still needed to find someplace to eat dinner at 8:30pm in Sandgate. I’ve heard great things about the Mafia’s food, but I cannot imagine that it is nearly good enough to be put through the experience of dealing with their utter incompetence at running a kitchen much less a hospitality business. If you’re thinking of giving them a try, I would advise you don’t bother. It can never be such great food to make up for appalling service and utter inability to do the most basic things that one would expect from a food service business. That’s what you get for trying to support a local business in Brisbane - the all too familiar experience of sub par service and inability to do anything right in...

Firstly, I loved how community based the atmosphere felt. They’ve set up at a football club, overlooking Thursday night games. It’s smoky and busy, initially it felt like a vibe. However the seating is limited and when the outdoor dining is full you have to shuffle seats indoors, which is less than appealing. Trust me.

The atmosphere, however, did not match up when you line up to order and realise the investment you’re making into your dining experience.

We where hopeful, “food must be amazing then”

Well, we waited 1.5 hours for our food, all the while we watched as the staff leant on benches in the back. I suppose they had nothing to do while they caught, slaughtered, butchered and then cooked the beef, because honestly, that is how long the wait time felt. Imagine the whole dining space of people starring longingly into the kitchen to see what the hold up was, because that is what was happening. It was an in sync tribe of people anxiously bouncing our legs, about to pounce, as the hunger consumed our humanity. But for real - 1.5 hours for a brisket box?

Finally, the sweet mercy of food had arrived. Oh man, the disappointment was tangible. One bite, was all it took to realise that the evening was a complete bust.

The meat was bland, the pickles warm and lacking flavour, the tacos were lacking flavour and seemed like a deep fried mess.

The only thing that we were satisfied with was their sauces and selection.

There is some great American BBQ joints across Australia and unfortunately this one just “ain’t it”

I would discourage anyone from visiting if you want sub-par food and beyond ridiculous wait times (and that’s not even accounting for their pricing, which didn’t not...