Bigun's Barbeque — Restaurant in Talking Rock

Amazing, friendly & cheerful service & atmosphere. Even the restrooms have a farmhouse feel. I enjoyed that aspect of this restaurant. There was an outside dining area as well (for beautiful days), but we dined inside tonight due to the cold weather.

However, there is no table service. You order at the counter just like a fast food place, you pick up your drinks at a different counter, but then they bring the food to your table when ready, by buzzing a beeper which they give you at the first counter, and you wave it high in the air "like you just don't care" (Lol) so they can find you.

The food is served on disposable plates, styrofoam cups & containers, and plasticware. When we asked the person who brought us our food if we could also get cups of water besides the sweet tea we already had picked up, she sweetly pointed us back to the drink counter and said we could go up there to ask for it. And when we want refills, again we go to the drink counter to ask for it.

The food was okay, but my $6 chicken sandwich was just cubed, dry chicken on a bun with some pickles on the side. Didn't even have lettuce, onions, or tomatoes. There were some bottles of BBQ sauce on the table, so I moistened my sandwich with that. The cubed chicken kept falling out, so I stopped replacing it and just ate the pieces of chicken with a fork after I finished the sandwich. (For $6, I could have enjoyed a fast food chicken sandwich much better with all those missing ingredients and bacon to boot! Like a $6 crispy chicken BLT Biggie Bag at Wendy's, which even includes fries, nuggets and a drink.) My husband's $9 bbq pork sandwich was messy, so he ate it with a fork from the beginning and said it was very good. The fries are great, potatoes and gravy: delicious, tater salad was my kind of potato salad, 😋 and the coleslaw was good. But the prices for the portions just didn't seem to match. We had also ordered banana pudding and chocolate cake for dessert, and while they were delicious, again, the prices didn't match up with the portions. I took pics of the desserts with my hand holding the pudding for size reference. The banana pudding was $3.19 and that contained a total of 2 vanilla wafers, some chunks of bananas, and covered with pudding in that little styrofoam bowl. That little slice of chocolate cake was $4.99.

We spent a total of $50 for 2 people and had no leftovers to bring home. (we passed on their $14 salads, and instead got the cheapest items on the menu) 90% of our time there, we were reminding each other that the atmosphere is unique & pleasant, and the staff were all friendly and cheerful. We did enjoy that. But we really struggled to accept that the food is worth the price we paid. We left there saying that now we know. It was nice to visit, but if we want to spend that much money on a date night again, we'd rather go to a steakhouse where we get full table service with bread rolls while you wait, followed by a salad, then the main course of steak, potatoes, veggie, drinks, and topped off with a dessert, all served on nice dishes, and drinks kept full. We would leave there with Leftovers to go, and all this for close to the same total price we paid tonight, plus a tip.

We appreciate tonight's experience, but we won't be back. This felt like a "fast-food restaurant" experience at "full service restaurant" prices. The only thing different from a fast food experience was...

The smoked turkey was a favorite for me. I am going to order this for the holidays. Their broccoli slaw is very good. I was a tad disappointed in the Redneck Lasagna. It was good, but as an entrée, there was no meat. It was only shells, cheese sauce and a tiny bit of tomato. It was overpriced for what it was.

Update: I have been a frequent flier to this restaurant over the last year, eating there three to four times a week, but they lost my business today - and frankly, they don't care. The food is good, although very overpriced, and it was on my way home. However, if you request anything from the ordinary, the order is frequently wrong. Most of the time they will make it good, but the owner lady is not pleasant about it. Salt is added to the fried okra and onion rings, and as an older person with high blood pressure, I ask for it to be left off. For my last order, they must have misread the ticket and thought I wanted extra salt - they loaded them with salt to the point I could not eat them. When I placed my next order, I requested that the girl just not charge me the upcharge on the onion rings, a difference of $1.50 when I could not eat over $7.00 worth of food. I did not even ask for them to make it good. She seemed unsure, so I decided not to order. Today, I tried again, and the girl who answered the phone said they would would only charge me for a regular meal. When I got there, the owner lady would not do it, and when I told her the girl on the phone said they would, she called me a liar. She was extremely rude about it. They have lost a regular customer over $1.50 which shows me it is about making money, and they have enough customers from the road that they could care less about their regulars. I have never had a restaurant owner call me a liar. I was in disbelief over the way I was treated. I have eaten overdone onion rings, salted food when I ordered no salt, and all I asked was for a $1.50 adjustment - and to be...

Ordered the four-meat combo and some additional sides. The brisket was very good, tender and good flavoring. The sausage was a bit over cooked, but had a good crunch to it. The ribs were a little dry, but had a good smokey flavor, and the chicken was also a little dry with good flavor. While the meat (other than the brisket) left more to be desired, the sauce and sides were awesome. While I normally can pick a favorite sauce at a BBQ joint, they were all equally as great and each added their own take on each of the meats. The mac and cheese was amazing, the collards were good, but lacked seasoning which would have made them above-standard (why not use the same seasoning as the pork rinds?) The baked beans and cole slaw were both very good, and the fries were good also. The fried okra was probably the best side item, perfectly fried and the seasoning was awesome. The Texas toast was awesome, not dry and not too over-buttered. The sweet tea was good, but very sweet. I prefer my tea that way, so no complaints there, but some may prefer a 50/50 w/ unsweetened. Pork rinds were awesome, great in-house seasoning made them above-standard. The banana pudding dessert was out of this world, and was probably the best thing I had. The fried apple pie was also very good, but I would choose the banana pudding over it if only getting one. Came here on vacation so our family wanted to try everything (almost) on the menu, and after reading the reviews online we were impressed. Not going to fault them too much for the dry meats, but it was a bit of a let down with the caliber of everything else we had. Still a 4 star spot for us, and would come...