Jones Bar-B-Que Victoria — Restaurant in Victoria

Worst Brisket I've ever had, what a massive disappointment. Here are the pros and cons.

Pros: The staff are both very patient and attentive, can't find fault with anything they did in front or behind the counter. The store is very clean, didn't notice any of the dirt you might expect in a BBQ establishment. The tater tots were great, crispy and didn't have the oily flavor you might expect when you deep fry potato. Great job on those.

Cons: The Pit Beans were a complete miss, there is smokey flavor and then there is burnt ash. Once you have a burnt flavor and texture to your beans there is no way to remove it. Coal could take a lesson in burnt taste on these things. The Pulled Pork, while having a fantastic smoke ring had almost no flavor to it at all, it just kind of filled up space in the box. Real shame. The Brisket, by far the nastiest thing we ate. It was evident that zero fat cap trimming was done on this. I understand that there is fat inside of the point of the brisket cut, however we were given slices from the flat. The fat cap was never removed, nor trimmed. Over half of each slice was inedible fat that ruined the little meat that was on them. No smoke ring whatsoever and the meat itself was watery. Everyone likes a moist brisket, this wasn't moist, this was wet. Not only ruined the taste but also the bark. Absolutely disgusting.

With the few options of BBQ available in Victoria I had decent hopes that this place would keep up with the reviews, but boy was I wrong. Had to throw half of the box away. I guess something has changed recently but I doubt I'll be back if this is the...

Let me start by saying, the staff are fantastic, with covid protocol, very efficient service, and the place looks very hip and cool. Now to the food, I order takeout every weekend for "family night" and we order big. We pretty much ordered every thing on the menu. So here's the run down... it's just a whole lot of meat, I know that's what we signed up for, but it was just sort of tasteless. I was expecting big flavour and it just doesn't deliver. The fried chicken is skinless, skinless!! the skin is where all the flavour comes from. It was some sort of skinless breaded chicken with absolutely no flavour. Thank god they included a dip otherwise it was tasteless and I ended up throwing most of it in the garbage. The grandpa Jones Sandwich contained so much meat... normally I would never complain about receiving too much food, but this was just an overload of meats all of which did not stand out from each other, there was nothing memorable about it. I ended up binning that too. The meats do not stand out from each other, they all taste the same. The sausage is totally unmentionable. The brisket tastes exactly likes the sausage, the sausage tastes exactly like the pulled pork. It is all a one flavour note. On a positive note, my son did like the pork ribs. He found them tender and delicious, I didn't try them. The poutine was fair, good portion but the flavour just does not deliver. Potato salad - ok, cole slaw - decent, the pickles - a little weird tasting, gravy - strange. I want this place to succeed and maybe it is, but as it stands right now I will not be back -...

I was really looking forward to trying this place out. Coming from Georgia/Tennessee we were looking for a little taste of home and this place is only a couple blocks from us so we hoped to make it a regular thing. Hubby had the ribs and I had the meat plate with beans and cornbread. The wait for food was a little longer than expected (forgivable). No one told us that we had to get our own cutlery and sauce (not a big deal) so we had to get back up to get it after we got our food. But then there was no sauce and no cutlery. When the guy in front of me (also waiting) told them, they said they were just putting the dishwasher on - but never told us where to get sauce. So we had BBQ with no sauce (sacrilegious). All this was a somewhat minor inconvenience but then the ribs were dry and over cooked (chewy), the pulled pork was very, very fatty and dripping with grease, the beans were the scraped burnt ones from the bottom of the pan, and the cornbread was dry and flavorlesss. Super disappointed as I had heard good things. Maybe we just went on a bad day? It was 5pm on a Sunday so wouldn’t expect that to be the cause. Anyway, my take away is that this place lacks the flavor and passion for good ol’ southern cook outs and you’re better off skipping it if you’re looking for true...