Lucille's Smokehouse Bar-B-Que — Restaurant in Lake Forest

Birthday Get-Together brought us to Lucille's- one of my fave BBQ places.

My wife & I got to Lucille's early, so we came on in, & plopped ourselves into a booth of the Flying Pig Lounge-Lucille's bar area. Instantly, I was loving the blues guitar music coming out of the speakers here.

We had about 30 min. to kill, so my wife & I ordered drinks from our friendly young server. I got a 20oz. Modern Times Orderville Hazy IPA & my wife requested a Lucille's Old Fashion, made with Woodford Reserve Bourbon. Drinks arrived fairly quickly. My tall beer was ice cold & so refreshing, & her Old Fashion was a great libation, as well.

I'd looked over the On-line Menu here, which even comes with pictures, & I was craving the Fried Green Beans. When they got to our table, these crispy green babies were piping hot, lightly-coated in breading & fried up perfectly. The Comeback Sauce, in a small bowl on the plate, was so good on the dunked green beans, with a pop of heat right up front, then warm savory flavors playfully roll around your mouth.

We finished our drinks & met our family, just in time for the 5pm dinner reservation. They seated all 6 of us in a side room, off the main restaurant, where they put large parties. It was a long skinny space, with high ceilings & no partitions to block off the sound.

Our server showed up fairly promptly, & took our orders. Drinks arrived shortly thereafter. Food took quite awhile to appear, as Lucille's was filling up fast, prime time on a Saturday night.

My 2 Meat Combo, set down before me on a large platter, looked amazing. I ordered the Pulled Pork & Tri-Tip, with BBQ Beans & Creamy Cole Slaw. Both meats were perfectly slow-roasted, tender & smoky-YUM. They lightly sauce the meats, so I like to dump on some extra sauce-my fave being their Original Sauce, which is on the table. After this, I threw some creamy cole slaw atop the pulled pork & commenced to chowing down. Lucille's does indeed know their BBQ- such incredible flavors greeted my mouth, as I savored each bite. BBQ Beans were solid, & always a good choice. The huge plate had too much food for me, so I ended up taking some home.

Final observations from my dinner at Lucille's:

The server who took our order was efficient, but not very personal. He was filling in for someone on their break.

The food was pretty slow coming out, but that wasn't horrible, since we were dining with family members, so we had lots to talk about. Our particular room was super noisy inside, so it was hard to converse with someone on the far side of the table. The furnishings inside are nothing fancy at all, but you come here for the food.

My food was tantalizingly good: everything I ordered was done to perfection! If I choose to find fault with anything at Lucille's Smokehouse BBQ, I'd say the service & ambience inside the restaurant portion...

Texas transplant, been looking for good barbecue in the area. I had gone to the same restaurant about a month earlier, for the first time, during the week around 3 or so, and had an outstanding meal, some of the best burnt ends I've ever had, really good pulled pork, potato salad , side of fried dill pickles and a drink, all at a reasonable price, just over 30$. I returned on a Saturday and was told they don't offer the lunch specials on the weekends so I was somewhat hesitant to pay 38$ for just a 2 meat plate but it came with 2 sides and I had a hankering for some of those great burnt ends, so I decided what the heck and I got the pulled pork, burnt ends, slaw and beans. The beans and slaw were really good, the pork was good, but the burnt ends were not burnt ends at all but rather just cubed bits of meat that the server told me was brisket, although to me it didn't look like brisket. When the server came back to check on me I asked him what happened to the burnt ends? Told him what I had been given were not the same burnt ends I had gotten a month earlier and he told me that sometimes they are different depending on what they have in the kitchen. Really? I mean burnt ends are burnt ends, how are they "different depending on what they have in the kitchen"? Boy was I disappointed, I really had my mouth set for burnt ends and that is not at all what I got, I even took a pic of the plate. Most restaurants only have burnt ends until they run out, the very nature of them being burnt ends means you're not gonna have a lot of them... In my opinion you don't cube some brisket up and call them burnt ends... Anyway, long story short, very very very disappointing, especially for the 40$ price tag.

Went again on 03/22/23 and food was fantastic this time, burnt ends were great and, as you can see in the pic, they were true burnt ends cooked just right; Texas red hot link & onion strings were great. Good experience, wait staff nice...

I usually give all Lucille's Restaurants a 5 star rating, as I am always pleased with their Restaurant interior designing, customer service and of course that really good southern food. But this location; got the great food and very interesting Deco/Interior designing. What I wasn't so pleased with was the customer service, our waiter. I think his name was Miguel, he was decent. He was assigned to us and he took maybe 15 minutes or so to tend to us. Even though the restaurant wasn't too full or busy. When he did come over and get our orders, he didn't quite listen to some of the details if our orders. When our complimentary biscuits arrived he gave us only 1 butter spread for the biscuit. We had asked him for at least 1 more and then our food arrived we told him if we can get the signature butter for the bread and also 5 ranch's. Then he came back with only 1 Ranch and we had told him we wanted 1 for each person a total of 5 in our group. When he brings them, he says "here's a bunch of ranches" personally that sounded rude. Cause we're not asking for much, just ranch for our fries. Not to mention the other butter spread for the biscuits never got there. We were celebrating a birthday for one of our friends, and if I'm not mistaken. When you do celebrate a birthday at Lucille's they sing happy birthday, it seemed odd that he didn't do that he just brought out the dresser they give for people celebrating their birthday but that was it. Overall, everything is good about this except just that waiter. P.S. The restroom smelled really strong like someone threw up and the restrooms weren't exactly clean like the other Lucille's restaurants I've been to. If I came back here I would make sure I get great customer service and attentiveness. Last last point, the food is...