Kinder's Meats Deli BBQ — Restaurant in Hercules

This location has gone downhill tremendously in the recent year. They used to be a go to once or twice a month, but now we avoid them completely. They’re like Forrest Gump’s box of chocolate: you never know what you’re going to get. When they’re on they’re fabulous but lately they’re always off. We’ve ordered 2 ways with double ribs and opened the containers to discover barely enough pieces for a 1 way. The ribs have been extremely dry and tough, completely inedible. The sides have contained wait equates to a half order. And we’ve received Mac & cheese that is clearly scraps from the day before. (I’ve managed restaurants so I’m fully aware of what day old food looks like.) We’ve also received mac & cheese with undercooked bacon. At times asking for bbq sauce makes you feel like Oliver Twist begging for more. I’m not sure how 3 containers of sauce are enough for 3 orders of two-ways. I’ve gotten potato salad that looks too scary to eat, and beans that I’d rather toss than ingest. We truly used to love the restaurant so we kept giving them chances to get back to where they once were. However, after a year of struggle plates enough is enough. Especially given our last incident. Order one: a two way double ribs, double mac. There were only 4 ribs in the box (the math isn’t mathing on that one) and they were shriveled up/dry & tough. The bacon in the mac & cheese was clearly undercooked. Order two: a two way double ribs, beans, and potato salad. This order had similar dehydrated ribs but at least there were 5. And the beans were over cooked. The potato salad was questionable. Order three: a two way ribs & quarter chicken, mac & cheese, and potato salad. Same shriveled ribs. Same questionable potato salad. The mac & cheese had fully cooked bacon though. That’s probably because it appeared to be old. Much older. When we attempted to complain to a manager we were told that one order of ribs would be replaced. I guess we were expected to all share that order and eat the horrible sides. I’m honestly not even sure if it was the actual manager that we spoke with or someone pretending to be the manager in order to protect their own _ for horrible service. What’s sad is that this seems to be a new look for them. I was telling a colleague about our poor experiences recently and she shred her own horror stories. We used to love this location so much but too many bad experiences have caused us to...

Friendly staff and good food.

This is the only restaurant within walking distance of my workplace (and I still drive there - go figure)... so I have a lot of experience with this particular location. I used to work near the Kinder's in Pleasanton and like this Concord branch substantially better.

So what's good to eat here? BBQ Chicken Salad: I like to eat a healthy lunch so I can indulge for dinner. This is the lunch for that. It comes with creamy chunks of avocado, some cheese, strips of chicken that are BBQ-ed (but not sauced), and a jar of creamy orangey ranch sauce (?). It fills you just enough so that you're nippish by dinner, but you don't feel insanely FULL after the salad. It's definitely a decent sized salad though. Just light, especially if you don't go crazy saucing your salad.

HOT LINKS: Oh my god, those hot links. They're spicy and have a great snap texture to them. So much better than a hot dog. You can either get it by itself or you can get it in this delicious sandwich slathered with BBQ sauce. I treat myself to one once a week or so. Usually on a Friday to celebrate TGIF.

Mac and Cheese: It's cheesy. Enough said.

What I'm not as much of a fan of: Deli sandwiches. I like my deli sandwiches with toasted bread. It just feels very plain to me. But on the healthy side. But the BBQ chicken sandwich is delicious. That's because it's got BBQ sauce oozing out of it and the chicken is warm and juicy.

BBQ: Found it a little tough and a little bland. I ate them all, but I was hungry and didn't crave more after I was done, unlike the hotlinks. If I eat the hotlinks and my pant buttons gave way, I would still be jones-ing for...

This is the best Kinder's I've ever been to as far as food quality and selection go. I had the pulled pork protein bowl. It was what I expected except for one thing - the pulled pork was in large pieces without any fat trimmed from it. I nearly threw up when I started chewing on a large piece that was 85% fat. Ewwww - (note to Kinder's - try to shred the meat into smaller bites and please trim the fat!)

My husband got the stuffed sourdough loaf with beef. He's a pretty big eater - especially when it comes to his all time fave - red blooded American beef. This particular sandwich got the upper hand on him though. He marveled at the piles and piles of beef stuffed into the loaf of French bread and wondered how it could possibly be priced the same as my protein bowl when he was clearly getting 4 times as much meat. It took him three days to finish that sandwich. So, if you're starving, this is the entree for you

Service was EXTREMELY slow, even though there was an ample amount of employees working. Their lack of customer service skills was less disconcerting than their speed. And they were no more crowded than usual. I had to wait 10 minutes before my order was taken and probably 15 minutes for the order to be ready. I find that to be unacceptable for a...