Four Pegs Smokehouse and Bar — Restaurant in Louisville

Very Disappointed

We've been here many times, and it's one of our favorite places in the neighborhood. I bring friends and family both from in and out of town to enjoy Four Pegs. All that is to say that we've always had good experiences before now, and I really hope tonight was an aberration.

We arrived about 7PM and were able to seat outside immediately. The server took our order for water and a diet Pepsi and we had them promptly. The server was back with the drinks in good time, and got our order by about 7:15. Unfortunately, that's where things started to go downhill tonight.

No followup was made to check on drink refills or anything else, despite our sever making no less than three rounds to multiple other outside tables near us.

When we finally caught the attention of another server to ask for a refill, nothing happened for some time. We were able to catch our initial server finally, and asked again. In the meantime the other server came by and found out we had not gotten our refill, and said they would remind our server. Our server apparently still forgot, as they came by to deliver more drinks to the table behind us, and could be heard muttering to themselves about needing a diet Pepsi. It finally arrived a short time later...and was a regular Pepsi, not diet.

Our order, which was rather simple (burger of the week, chicken and waffles, and an order of fries) took about an hour and ten minutes to arrive. The kitchen was apparently extremely busy despite the relatively light number of patrons at the restaurant, due to orders being received through three different delivery services. If we had been informed of this up front, so that we could decide if that was a time frame that would work for us, it would have been fine. We understand, this happens. Sometimes things are slow and the kitchen is overwhelmed. However, nothing was said at any time, until we spoke to a manager at the end, about this. As a result, we were not able to make this choice, and the total time (nearly two hours) prevented us from being able to get to other places in order to accomplish a couple other things we wanted to get done tonight.

I myself usually order the chicken and waffles. I have for years. This is my go-to dish here. The menu still offers chicken and waffles, and very specifically says that a Belgian waffle is part of it, as it always has been. This is true for every "and waffle(s)" dish listed. However, when the order arrived, it was chicken...atop a funnel cake. Needless to say, this is not what I came for, not what was offered, and not what I wanted or expected. Don't get me wrong, it was good. But it's absolutely not OK to deliver something that is not what was ordered or offered...

We visited two times over the course of a weekend - friday night was 4 hours at a 5-star. Saturday evening was barely a four star visit. So I'm rounding up. Ara was our waitress on Friday evening and was freaking amazing! Our waitress on Saturday seemed distracted and only came by a couple times - drinks sat empty quite a while and it was no busier than it was the day before with fewer waitresses.

They don't have a ton of tables inside, but there are a couple on the sidewalk and a patio of sorts behind the building. So, hopefully the weather is nice enough that you can find a place.

They don't serve most national brands of beer, just so you know. My ultra-picky brother and my mom tend to be homebodies when it comes to beer but did try a few. So, don't be afraid of venturing out. Same kind of goes for the bourbon / whiskey choices. Lots of local or regional options, but not a lot of national ones (no captain morgan, for example).

Now for the food: fried pickle appetizer is made of bread n butter pickles. They were fine, but I would have preferred a heads-up since I don't normally like that flavor of pickle. Not real salty, though. Smoked wings are AMAZING! So good, so yummy, so tasty. Next up, the smoked bologna sandwich. By itself, a really good sandwich. I'd love it and come back for me. My problem? My brother ordered the pork belly sandwich on grilled cheese. Holy freaking cow! That thing was incredible! Ruined my perfectly yummy smoked bologna sandwich though. The fries you are offered by default are not typical fries - think larger chunks of fries, like home fries (but with a nice seasoning blend on them). Beer mac n cheese is not bad. It's got a good flavor and is super gooey, but I wasn't blown away. They were out of lots of stuff when we visited on Saturday so I didn't get to try the Cuban - I'm sure it's great. :)

Bonus - there was live music inside on Friday evening. It's nothing spectacular, but it was...

Came here alone to experience one of their hotbrowns as part of Louisville’s hotbrown week. Ordered 2 sides as well with them being BBQ baked beans and collard greens. Sadly the collard greens ended up being my favorite part of the meal with the right amount of flavor ratio between the saltiness and bitterness of the greens. The bbq sauce with my baked beans was just too tangy for me and was just overloaded with black pepper. As for the hotbrown, it was pretty decent for the most part. I really enjoyed the fried green tomato which had been fried in cornbread batter but the nacho cheese sauce and the little drizzle of the bbq sauce may have been a tad too much for my liking. It just tasted very peculiar to me like those ingredients just didn’t belong on a hotbrown so I was very much so-so about it. Also my smoked chicken although good had stringent of pink throughout its entire thigh and I honestly didn’t notice it until much of the sauce was gone. When I pointed it out to my server he said that pink chicken was normal in the smoking process so when I asked him what the usual internal temperature was that they normally cooked their chicken around and he said that he didn’t know.. that made me a little anxious. When he came back 5 minutes later and told me that they cooked their chicken until its internal temperature reaches 165 and that it was higher than the minimum that made me anxious even more cause at minimum internal temperature for cooked poultry is 165 degrees so it is not that much higher than the minimum at all. But all in all, it was a nice quiet bar to grab lunch at and my server did do a great job on checking up with me to see how I was enjoying my meal but seeing how it took some time for them to answer my question about internal cooking temperature which seemed like they must’ve went on google to look for… I would probably abstain from ordering chicken or any poultry dish from them again...