Smokin' Buns — Restaurant in Arkansas

Good food, good atmosphere. I would recommend giving this place a try.

We went for lunch and were instantly seated. Our drinks and the chips and dip came out fast. The rest of our food took a while, but not to long.

My husband ordered the single burger with cheese, the chili and the small chips and dip. He wasn't impressed by any of it. His choice word was "bland"

I tasted the tortilla chips, which had no salt but tasted ok, the cheese dip, I agreed was ok, not impressive, for the price it was decent, though the dip was very runny/thin and gritty. There was also plenty of cheese dip for it being a small. The chili tasted like regular under seasoned chili, not great but not bad, a dash of salt would fix it.

I ordered the grand slam burger with grilled mushrooms. The patties were under seasoned but tasted good, again a dash of salt and pepper did wonders. There were very few mushrooms (like 2-3 very thin slices on each patty ) that didn't look/taste grilled, they were soft and tasted like a plain sliced mushroom (I would have liked to actually taste the mushrooms with my burger, but with the thin slices and being so few, the cheese and bacon removed the flavor of the mushrooms) The cheese and bacon were good, the veggies were fresh and delicious, though I'd have liked more lettuce (it was 1 uncut leaf folded up) I added a bit of the smoky bbq and the sweet bbq to the burger patties and then they were really good.

I ordered a single rib and shrimp skewer as well, the rib was tender, juicy and pretty good, though it was unseasoned and the top bits were a bit tough, but with a splash of the bbq sauces it tasted so good.

The shrimp skewers had seasoning, but again the bbq sauces made them so much better (but I'm a bit bias, because I like a little sweetness in my food lol)

All in all, I'd recommend this place, the food is good for the price and with a dash of salt, pepper and bbq sauce, the food tastes a lot better. I also ended up having plenty...

Update September 2024:

I haven't been in a while, The past few years we started going to the barbecue place in gravel ridge, but they recently retired and went out of business. My wife decided that we would try again. She went over and picked it up. Do yourself a favor, go to the grocery store by the cheapest frozen and canned products you can find that look like they'll make the food, and you should get the same or better food.

The barbecue sauce is the highlight. And it's not as potent as I remember. I think they've watered down the recipe. It didn't have near as much flavor.

Fried pickles: I don't know how you're supposed to taste anything over the salt. But if it wasn't for the salt they would have no flavor at all... Very bland, over fried and oversalted.. The ranch dip was watered down too. You get more flavor out of the bargain grocery store brand ranch dressing.....

BBQ chicken sandwich: soggy, low flavor. Tasted like they took canned chicken, poured the least amount of liquid smoke, mushed it together and slapped it on a bun. I would not call this real barbecue chicken. You can get better out of the frozen food section...

Chicken quesadilla: should have been called kesO'dilla... It definitely has nothing Spanish about it, So it should not be dignified with the Spanish name. Tasted like they use the same canned chicken, and the cheapest cheese at the grocery store they can find. They gave us a tub of cheese dip on the side, gross. Cheap canned cheese dip. If you've ever had the displeasure, you know what I'm saying.

Maybe they're beef and pork is better, but I would stay far away from that chicken... I be ashamed to serve this as a home-cooked meal; much less as a restaurant making people pay for it.

Original review from 2019: Ordered to go. Food is ok.. had the chicken, it was a little bland. They forgot my rib and the sauce, didn't realize till I got home. Might of...

I can’t give a star on the food. We never got it. We got there and expected to wait a little bit for a table. Once we were seated, it took 10-15 minutes for a waitress to come to our table. When she did, we ordered our drinks, appetizer, and food. Our appetizer came out in a decent amount of time. After about 45 minutes of waiting for our food, I stopped the waitress and asked how much longer our food was going to be. She then informed us that they had a party in the back room and they were getting our order as quickly as they could. 10 minutes later a different waitress came and told us they were out of pork and asked if we wanted something else. At this point we were just DONE waiting. We both told her no and left. If you have a party coming in, and it’s a holiday weekend, it’s a good idea to OVER plan for food and have some left over than to make customers wait over an hour to get our food just to be told that because of that party, you no longer had any pork. The service was stupid slow. When we left there were 5 or 6 people sitting out back smoking and talking instead of being inside working. My guess is that they had absolutely nothing to do, which did not seem likely to me. We had given ourselves what we thought was plenty of time to have a wait before one of us had to be over 2 hours away for work. As a former team leader in a VERY busy restaurant, this was completely unacceptable. I know the staff knew well before that they would be running out of pork but still waited 45+ minutes before telling us. Management should have been keeping an eye on the food amounts so they could have sent someone out earlier to inform us they were out. If parties are that big of a part of your customer base, maybe you should just concentrate on doing parties and not trying to have an...