Rivertown Smokehouse — Restaurant in Missouri

I have cooked a lot of barbeque....a lot.

I have eaten a lot of barbeque....a lot.

This is the worst bbq I've ever had, ever. It is hard to even refer to this as bbq to be honest.

We have a lot of kids so we had a fairly big order. Full rack of ribs, 2 brisket plates, pulled pork plate, burnt ends salad, and a couple chicken strips kid meals. The full rack was $28, the plates were about $20, salad was $15, and the kids meals were around $8-$10 (Can't remember exactly).

I will start with the good since it won't take long. The Mac and Cheese as well as the beans were pretty good. They weren't anything special but they were still good and on par with what I would expect at a place like this. Probably similar to something you would get at Rib Crib.

The bad...I don't know where to start. So I guess I'll start with the one that was just an outright lie. The "burnt end" salad. I introduced my daughter to burnt ends about a year ago. I don't always make them, but when I do she never wanted to try them. I finally talked her into it recently and she loves them now so when she saw the burnt end salad, two things she loves, she was sold. Well, it was a salad...because there was lettuce. But there were no burnt ends. There was some grey cubes of ice cold meat...not like room temp been sitting out meat...ice cold like it just came out of a fridge. I figured she was just being picky so I cut off some of my rib meat and put it on her salad and took the gray mystery meat and put it on my plate. It was disgusting About that time my other daughter than had gotten the brisket plate pushed it away and said she was done after she had eaten about a half slice. That's when I recognized where the "Burnt End" meat had come from. The brisket was a dull gray, absolutely no smoke ring whatsoever, and the fat wasn't even rendered. It appeared to have a bark, but I'm not even sure what to make of it because there was no seasoning flavor to it at all. I'm a SPG purist but I couldn't even make any of that out. It tasted like someone put a brisket cut in an oven, unseasoned, at 425 degrees until the outside was black. The salad meat appeared to be cubes of the same....I suspect now that it was made from yesterdays "brisket" that was cubed and put in the fridge to be rebranded as "Burnt ends" and thrown on a salad.

I should have been immediately suspicious of the ribs. When I ordered them, the guy pulled them out of a steam pan with some tongs and I could see water pouring off of them. I almost called him off at that point to switch to the sausage plate but I had promised the kids ribs (I usually eat half the rack and parcel out the other half to them) and figured maybe they wouldn't be too bad. Again, I was wrong. They would rank slightly higher than the brisket but I think it's only because pork is harder to mess up than beef. Have you ever been to someone's house who has discovered how you can "cook" ribs in the instant pot or in a slow cooker? That's what this tasted like. The meat was mushy, unseasoned, and once again no evidence that it had ever seen a lick of smoke at all.

I think whatever process is used on the ribs was the same as the pulled pork. Imagine throwing a pork butt into a slow cooker, unseasoned, and turning it on. That's pretty much it. The two pork dishes were somewhat salvageable by just slathering them in bbq sauce. The salad and the brisket, were not. I tried to eat them because I didn't want to pay $130 for food to get thrown away but even I couldn't choke it down.

Oh I said I'd put the best thing first and I guess I completely forgot about one thing. The chicken strips. They definitely looked like they came right out of a Sam's Club frozen chicken strip bag but both the kids that got those hoovered them down and asked for more. So I guess, if you're going to try this place out, stick with the kids chicken strips.

The picture of the "Burnt ends salad" is after I doused it in bbq sauce. The gray brisket slices are in the top left. Also the rolls taste and feel like a...

The service was rushed and overall rude. Upon ordering the man rushed us did not listen to our order concerns. He was tossing the food on trays and tuning us out. The food was not good, the tater tots were hard at least the majority of them. The chicken strips were cold, I did ask for new ones and you could tell the lady was bothered. The ribs tasted like lighter fluid, we ordered more than one plate. The only thing we all enjoyed was the Mac and cheese. It’s really unfortunate to come to a family park and have this happen. I have been to several Dollar city multiple times. This is the first time that I ate at the smokehouse and this will definitely be the last. Oh last when we went to check out, there was a big group of us and I was trying to keep the group together so we could get our discounts on our food. The lady on the other register started demanding that our group split up and come to her register when I asked her to please wait, she proceeded to laugh...

The River town Smokehouse. ⭐⭐⭐ Ordered the triple stack sandwich for the price of 18.99. I expected a much larger sandwich. It was in a small burn and wasn't stacked to high honestly. I expected more here.. But, it did fill my up.

My sandwich was already pre wrapped and shoved into the stack with all the others. I had to add the pickles .myself and had I not asked about them would assume they were already on the sandwich like the menu shows.

Also, ordered the the smoked turkey sandwich. It was served on a hardy bun, with flavorless guacamole. You get a bit of a witness from the corn salad . Adding honey mustard helped add needed flavor. It did fill me up

Taste was 3 out of five stars. ⭐⭐⭐

Staff was friendly and seating area was covered...