BBQ King Smokehouse and Tavern — Restaurant in Huntley

I would like a response from the owner of this location for the following review (also placed on Yelp): DO NOT DINE HERE!!! Father's Day...Still waiting on food to be delivered to a very wobbly table. Order was placed over 30 minutes ago. It is now 5:07pm. Only half capacity, it appears. Excuse from server is "very busy in carryout". Not good. This means your kitchen is under staffed. Unacceptable. I can only imagine how behind you will be running if you fill up all of your seats tonight. Just went downstairs to the host stand to see who was the MOD. Was told by the two girls it's Rob, and he's upstairs. Told them I wanted to speak with him. When Rob came downstairs, he immediately engaged in conversation with them about seating instructions. Either one could have told him I wanted to talk to him, but they didn't. I was not acknowledged until I started walking away to go back upstairs to my table. At this point, it is after 40 minutes since order was placed. I have rounded up my wife and kids and we are walking out. On the way out I told my server we were leaving, and I told Rob that 40 minutes to wait for an order is unacceptable. He mentions they're "busy", to which I told him the place has several empty tables. "Your kitchen is under staffed," I said. THERE WAS NO APOLOGY at all. He could have used this as an opportunity to not only save this customer, but to prevent this customer from sharing this AWFUL experience. And trust me, I'm sharing it with as many people as possible...mostly because of Rob's failure to diffuse the situation and prevent a customer walkout. He didn't care at all. That was THE worst part of this experience. And just 3 more things... My wife left $10 on the table to cover the cost of drinks and something for our server. (I told her that $5 was more than sufficient, but she has a bigger heart than me. Read #2 and you'll understand why I felt this way.) SERVICE: Empty drinkware was never removed from our table. I had 3 empty glasses of iced tea, and each of my kids' empty glasses were never removed. ALSO...If the server recognizes that food is taking a long time, bring out another basket of rolls at some point. Don't just leave the empty basket on the menu the entire time. Watching another server cleaning a table, he removed glassware with "The Claw" technique (sticking fingers into the glasses to remove 3 or more at the same time). Drinkware must always be handled from the bottom third of the glass, at all times. This is highly unsanitary. You might as well have him stick his fingers inside a...

So, I like this place. Nice clean building in a great area, great staff, and who doesn’t like bbq? I went here for lunch with the fam a couple days ago and was excited to get some brisket that I personally didn’t have to slave over for 12+ hours. During lunch, you can’t get fresh sliced brisket. Instead, you get yesterdays brisket, chopped up and thrown in a salty broth to keep it from going bad. Here’s the thing - they charge the same amount for fresh sliced brisket as the do for the salty chopped brisket. You literally have to drown the meat in bbq sauce for it to taste good.

I like to be able to taste the smoke flavor in my bbq. The chicken also tasted like it came out of a crock. Dry, no Smokey flavor, just lackluster.

Let’s talk about the sides - baked beans - only thing with Smokey flavor on my plate - and way too much of it. Tastes like canned baked beans doctored up. Definitely has liquid smoke in it because it has a citrus/bitter aroma. Smoked food only gets bitter from one of 2 things: yellow smoke, and liquid/artificial smoke flavor.

Next, Mac n cheese - basically velveeta with smoked paprika in it. Nothing of note. Small elbow noodles, which honestly should be large, and no real wow factor in the flavor at all.

When I go out to eat - and spend $25+ for a plate - it is supposed to be better then what I can make at home. Unfortunately, bbq king has none of those things. If the owners of the business want honest criticism, coming from someone with an elite culinary background and wants to see this business at its best, here it is:

Build a smokehouse. A real one. Go old school and learn the art of wood burning bbq. The food would taste 1,000 times better, rather than being cooked in an oversized rotisserie oven.

Cook early and often - get someone firing up that smoker early, so people can enjoy some good bbq no matter what time of day. Otherwise, lower your prices for lunch. You can’t charge the same price for poor quality.

Make everything from scratch. It’s not difficult to make baked beans. It’s not hard to make a cheese sauce and out a little unique love into it. This is what prep cooks are for. Get them in there early and putting all the love into the food.

I get cost is high. I understand labor is hard to find these days. But this is your brand, your craft. If I had the opportunity to run a business like this I would be over the moon to wake up daily to inspire my kitchen to craft with love, with passion. It’s not about the money. It’s about making bellies - and the people their...

Our first time here. We tried the place because my wife's friend recommended it. My wife, our son, and myself went. To make it simple, we ordered the "5 1/2". I believe it's 1/2lb pulled pork, 1/2lb beef brisket, 1/2 chicken, 1/2 slab St. Louis ribs, 1/2lb smoked sausage. It also comes with 4 large sides. We ordered fries, sweet potato fries, coleslaw, and mac and cheese. And, it comes with 1 drink. I've to pay for 1 more drink and a beer for me.

I like that none of the meat are dry. Definitely a bad thing if they served any dry meats. I concentrated on tasting all the meats without any sauces. They serve the meats without any sauces, and, that's a good thing. Many other BBQ places mask their meats with sauces right away which can be a good or not so good thing.

The meats, starting with the ribs, was good. However, after a few bites, I wanted to taste it with their sauces available on the table. Ribs' good but I'm looking for more smoke in the meat. The smoked sausage tasted pretty good. I needed to refrain myself from eating most of it. I need to have room to try the other meats. The 1/2 chicken, my son and I liked. It tasted natural and seasoned mildly. This too we're looking for a bit of smoke in the meat. The pulled pork tasted very good and moist. Flavor's good. The beef brisket tasted pretty good also. Again, not dry. The sides were good. I would've tried the BBQ baked beans instead of the coleslaw. Maybe in our next visit.

We like the place. It's not big. I can easily see it being packed on many days/nights. The time we went, it's close to 2p. Not a whole lot of people in the restaurant. After a few minutes, however, some more people started coming in. We even observed some are new to the place too. Before I forget. The staff's welcoming and helpful and the place is clean. That's very good first impression on me. And, try the different sauces, of course. I almost forgot to mention it.

Would we come back? Sure! Place is good. We'll try other items on the menu next time. We went here after coming from Gurnee Mills mall.

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