Dreamland BBQ — Restaurant in Montgomery

Dreamland Barbecue Restaurant Review – Montgomery, AL – 4 August 2024

If your travels bring you to Montgomery, Alabama, my wife and I highly recommend Dreamland Barbeque Restaurant located downtown. Recently, we went to the Legacy Museum and spent a couple days in town to visit the three components of this impressive recitation of African American History, spanning slavery to mass incarceration. After a long drive and hours of touring, we yearned for some of the South’s most authentic comfort food. Living in the New York City area for a combined twenty-seven years, I grew up in the South and vividly recall the tastiness and delight of barbecue and sides. We happened upon Dreamland which is less than a five-minute walk from the museum. There, we found exquisite Southern hospitality and great food. I recommend the dual plate which offers two meats and sides. The pork ribs and chicken with macaroni and cheese and fried okra are a heavenly delight. Fortunately, they leave a stack of napkins on the table. The ribs have a nice color and appetizing grill marks; they are equally tasty and lend themselves to constant dipping in homemade barbecue sauce. The fried okra deliciously satisfies any fan of this side. Beyond the food, one of Dreamland’s biggest and most rewarding assets is its wait service. They epitomize what you would expect from Southern graciousness and charm. Their quality of service and attentiveness will compel you to leave a twenty-five percent gratuity as we did. In fact, we returned for lunch two days later. That day, I had the pulled pork sandwich with coleslaw and fried okra of course. The big sandwich will hold you until supper time. It is served on a buttered roll, grilled roll with a golden color that forces you to finish the sandwich. Moreover, the waitress that afternoon matched the previous waitress quality of service and consideration. Dreamland offers a variety of items including salads, wraps, breakfast and dessert (banana pudding never grows old). If barbecue and good service are what you are seeking, Dreamland in downtown Montgomery, Alabama...

Me and 2 of my sisters from out of town visited the downtown location this past weekend and had one of the worst experiences. When we first arrived, it took about 5-8 mins to get seated, but the issue was that there wasn't enough staff to clean the tables once the customers left, so that left customers waiting a long time to be seated. When we finally got seated, it took another 10 mins for someone to take our drink order, at this point we were ready to go, but we decided not to because we had just recently walked out of another restaurant due to them being slow. Finally someone came and took our order and after that we were waiting for an hour before we got our food, we remained in this restaurant because we were hungry and all we kept hearing from our server is that ," your food will be out shortly, your food is coming up next, just the typical trained lines that they are suppose to tell customers that have been waiting a long time. Finally our food comes out and it's another waitress that brings it out and she's asking who ordered what and one of my sister's said that she didn't remember because they had taken so long to bring it out. I guess that must've made the waitress upset, because , when she gave me my food she just pushed it over to me and told us to "Enjoy with an attitude. All in all this was a bad experience and the food wasn't even good at all. Our original waitress was nice, but she just kept lying about the wait time for the food. We won't be going...

Dreamland BBQ is a chain of eleven restaurants in AL, GA, and FL known for the pork spareribs and bbq sauce. There are two locations in Montgomery; I went to the location in historic Montgomery. Dreamland has a bar vibe with exposed brick walls, several large televisions throughout and an in-house brewery behind the bar.

We ordered the Ultimate BBQ plate w/ chicken, ribs, pork, baked beans and coleslaw, the Dream Wings (BBQ flavored) and french fries.

I love bbq and wanted to love Dreamland, but I could not get over the poor service and average food. It took nearly 30 minutes for us to be recognized by the waitstaff. It was another 30 minutes for drinks to arrive. While the waiter was friendly, there were missed orders and missed item requests.

The highlight of the meal were the chicken wings, which were very flavorful and were appropriately crispy. The sweet tea was also tasty (definitely a “sweet” tea). The fries were solid but could have used a little more salt.

The bbq sauce is a vinegar-based sauce and was balanced and had a nice thick texture. However, the other meats were not properly seasoned and were overly dependent on the sauce. The other sides were also...