Mabel's BBQ — Restaurant in Cleveland

If you want a twist on a “traditional” BBQ restaurant, you must try Mabel’s BBQ. It’s easy to access on 4th St. There’s valet parking as well as parking in the lot on Prospect. They offer outdoor seating for those that like eating outside. Entering the restaurant, it’s totally different. Of course they have someone looking at available seating. We went on a Saturday around 3pm and it was plenty of seats. The staff were very polite, friendly, & personable. I love the simplicity of the restaurant. It’s tastefully designed and decorated. Over the bar, it has the various foods offered. The bar itself is very inviting. It has plenty of seating and appears to have a large selection of different types of liquor. When entering the dining area, there’s two long table with seating for maybe 20 people. Then they offer sitting against the wall, which was nice. They also have upstairs seating too. The bathrooms are unisex. The bathroom was clean; they don’t have the toilet seat covers. Now the food!! The menu offers a variety of smoked pork and beef. They have a loaded potato with brisket and it’s enough for two - three people! Very loaded and my friend said it’s thee best loaded potato ever! She said the meat and cheese sauce made it a hit. She tried the hot greens. She said they were ok but not seasoned enough. I had 1/2 slab of pork ribs and a side of potatoes. The food was presented in a cool way; on a tray. The ribs were nicely placed on the tea along with my sides of potatoes, sauerkraut, pickles, and a slice of rye bread. They don’t put sauce on the ribs, which I really like. They have two different type of sauces: vinegar based and sweet, on the table, so you can put as little or as much sauce in your food as you like! I didn’t care for the vinegar based sauce because it was “runny”. But the sweet sauce was on point!! Very good taste and had a little weight to it. The bones were cooked /smoked very nicely. The meat just comes right off the bones. The potatoes were good but not seasoned enough. They don’t have salt and pepper at the table. The pickles were delicious as well as the sauerkraut. At first the rye bread was a strange choice since I’m used to white bread with BBQ; but the rye bread was a great alternative to white bread. The slice was large, soft, and the smell of the bread was very fragrant. I would love to have a loaf for corned beef sandwiches!! I’m a big fan of rye bread and this is thee best. Overall, I give this place a 10/10! The meeting was unique, the food was delicious, the staff were great too. I said it’s not a traditional BBQ restaurant because they don’t offer the white bread, fries, chicken wings and other food items like that. Again, it’s BBQ with a Polish twist! Kielbasa, pork belly, Polish girls and so much more! The prices are very reasonable especially for the size of the meal and the quality. The server was great too, so a generous tip was well deserved. I highly recommend...

--- 2024/04/20 --- Passing through the greater Cleveland area on our way to upstate NY and Mable's on 4th is a must for us... UNFORTUNATELY for us downtown was insane last night and we again couldn't find affordable (i.e. sane pricing)... SO we again had to go takeout.

Was really bummed that they were out of the pastrami Dino bone at 6pm on a Saturday. Not sure how that's possible. 😡

The brisket, collard greens, crispy potatoes and pecan pie we're ALL great. The apple pie was just OK and the Only in Cleveland bowl must didn't hit the spot for us. The meats were delicious... but the hot cabbage was too much and brought the dish down.

Hopefully the Mable's team will have a Dino bone for us the next time we're through.

--- ORIGINAL REVIEW --- Oh WOW... where to start?

Really bummed that we couldn't dine-in, but the MLB was playing tonight and parking was NON-EXISTENT! ⚾😡

We did a takeout order that just exceeded $100, but we wanted to try several items. For meats we got a 1/2lbs of brisket (lean) & pulled pork plus the GIANT beef rib (1.5lbs)... 🤤 for sides we got the broccoli salad, collard greens and fried potatoes.

ALL of the meats were NEXT LEVEL AMAZING! 😍 The giant beef rib was BY FAR my favorite... but the brisket was 2nd only to Franklins of Austin (which is HIGH praise). The pulled pork would have been awesome on its own, but the other two were just... I don't have the words.

The fried potatoes were quite good. My wife likes the broccoli salad and the hot greens were tasty, but lots of stems 🙁.

While we didn't eat lunch today... I truly expected to have a fair amount of leftovers... 😳 but it was just TOO DAMN GOOD.

I can't wait for our next stop over in Cleveland so we can dine-in and hopefully see my wife's crush (Iron Chef Michael...

I had a taste for a Polish girl, and this place was the closest to me from the west side, but I wouldn’t recommend wasting time or money here. The “manager” Kelly is unfortunately rude and I’m not quite sure how she got that position. I was extremely polite & I didn’t ask for a refund but she literally was careless about my concern absolutely no compassion for people with food allergies. I’ve been managing in customer service for over 10 years and it doesn’t make any sense at all how somebody can be so ill mannered and supposed to be in a higher position when they obviously dont pay her well enough to have empathy or resolve simple issues. However It seems like my concern with my order is very popular with this place as she was so nonchalant with her response. I was trying to explain how I placed my order and the way that I saw the menu it did not explain the Poppyseeds and I attached a screenshot since she wants to correct a courteous customer, I simply made a suggestion that they should notify people that they put poppyseeds in their slaw as I NEVER herd of poppyseeds in coleslaw before today.. A true Cleveland Polish boy/ girl is supposed to have fries on it…. For $17+ it was extremely disappointing to just have meat and vinegar based coleslaw.. however other staff has been very polite I wish I was able to get it exchanged with no coleslaw, but as a non-confrontational person, I had to hang up because it was really troubling on how she was responding to me not once did I blame anybody for my honest mistake on not looking at their PRINTED menu all because I had my mouth fixed for a Polish girl, and this was the first place to pop up, and I gave them a chance. Gracefully I just gave it to a less fortunate person that needed it...