Tennessee's Real BBQ — Restaurant in Peabody

Might be good, I'll never know... the delivery was awful and cost any chance at future business.

TLDR: You can do far better going somewhere else, especially if you are getting it delivered.

The delivery... I'm in a hotel. A big one. With a conference center. It was cold and late, and I just didn't feel like going out to eat. So I used a delivery app. The ordering process was smooth, and the delivery time set. Hard parts over, right?

The service I used texted me at the appropriate time that the food was almost here. Then, I get the text that the food has been delivered when expected, except I couldn't tell where. I asked the hotel desk attendant if they'd gotten a delivery, said nobody's been in the lobby in the past 15 minutes. I showed them the delivery confirmation picture of a random door and stairway. Not the main lobby, just a random door. No details. Front desk guy had no idea where it was. So next thing I'm walking literally around the hotel conference center in freezing weather, checking all of the doorways that might be the magic one where my food is. Keep in mind I'm also starving at this point, so I'm in a really good mood. But its ok because I also had left my hoodie upstairs, because I wasn't expecting to go on a nature hike just to find my food....

So I finally found it and - yup.. food is pretty much ice cold. Turns out a plastic bag is no match for 35 degree windy air. Great. I finish my trek around the property, go thru the lobby, wave to the desk guy and point "that way" to the random door, hop in the elevator and get back up to the room 20 minutes after the food was delivered. It's then that I find that even tho I paid for a silverware set, none was included. I'm too hungry (and stubborn) at this point to walk to the elevators, go down a dozen floors and back past the front desk and to the restaurant to ask for utensils and I end up eating using two wooden coffee stirrers. Do you know how hard it is to eat BBQ beans, pulled pork, mac n cheese with chopsticks? I do. It sucked.

On to the food. The ribs. If they were the slightest bit warmer they might have been ok. None of that fall off the bone tenderness, 4 out of 10. And they weren't cut cleanly, seemed like a collection of odd bits chopped off of other racks. If this is what they're known for, then I seriously have to question the level of BBQ in the area.

I've often thought of Pulled Pork as one of the easiest BBQ foods to make. Literally spice it up, cook it for a long time, and pull it apart. Winning strategy. This Pork was ok, but not well prepared. Plenty of chunks of bone and globs of fat. 3/10. No real smoke flavor, I found myself wondering if it was cooked in a crock pot. I ordered 1 of each sauces, and found that their Tangy Sauce was actually quite good. The sweet and the hot however, quite bad. But that's just preference.

The chicken was too cold to eat. 1/10. It looked like chicken.

The Baked BBQ Mac n Cheese was a poorly mixed Kraft Blue Box as far as I could tell. Nothing about this offered even the slightest imagination of baking or BBQ. Luckily it was cold and clumpy, so eating with chopsticks was a little easier. 2/10

The BBQ beans were.. odd. I've never eaten beans that felt like little sausages, with the skin popping each and every bite. Very harsh flavor. Didn't eat much. 2/10.

Overall, I should have gone with my instinct and ordered Dominos. And that's not even real pizza. But it would have been better than this travesty. Poor delivery, missing items off the order, sub-par food. Zero chance of being a...

I always wanted to try this place and me and my husband and our kids ordered a takeout dinner meal that I went and picked up, upon arriving home and opening the bag we were supposed to get a barbecue chicken meal that feeds a family of four. There was in fact no chicken at all, My Husband got a side of ribs and the ribs were in the bag and the sides were in the bag. The sides were mashed potatoes with gravy, macaroni and cheese, baked, cornbread that was quite tasty, a container of pulled pork, and a side order of four buns to put the pulled pork on was included. Really enjoyed the pulled pork. I thought the ribs were great after I put them in the oven on broil for about five minutes so they would get nice and crispy because the way I receive them they were cooked to temperature but not cooked to my liking. I do enjoy my ribs more crispy then just very soft especially the price of ribs these days so thankfully they did come out better with a little bit of more cooking that was not a big deal at all. The big deal was the fact that I had to drive all the way back to the store and pick up the chicken part of the meal and it wasn’t even ready because they claimed I didn’t call them and report it to that I actually called one of their other locations that’s over an hour away so obviously I wasn’t going to drive that far so they did prepare the chicken for me having to wait about 15 minutes drive back home with the check in half my plate was cold half of it was warm and it was just very frustrating. I made one simple order with a side. It should not have been that difficult, and if it wasn’t for some of the items being very tasty, I would not have rated them any stars no offense to Tennessee real barbecue but it’s just not worth $75 and I will probably not order from there again however, that being said if that’s your type of food that you truly enjoy, then this might be a winner winner, chicken, dinner for ya, but just didn’t fit to my leggings in all the extra aggravation involved was...

It hurts me to have to review this place so low after years of giving them my business but they have SIGNIFICANTLY gone down hill this past year. I’ve been here more times then i can count and it always use to be the best experience each time and i do mean that but the last 3-4 times i got food here there has been something within reason for it to be a bad experience. The meat quality has been so low my last visits. today my brisket was terrible (what i usually get, so i know what the standard should be), it was the most dried out, overcooked, hard slices you could have imagined. after a few slices of pretty much covering these in bbq sauce i decided i was done. Also with today’s order they messed up half the sides i ordered so i ended up with an only a single part of the meal that was basically edible to me. Previous to that is almost the same story, one time they gave me brisket end pieces (like the pieces marbled with all fat and you have like 30% meat and it’s not even good actual meat) and my girlfriend who LOVES pulled pork couldn’t even eat theirs because she thought it was not good at all when i showed her this place. and other things i could go on about but i do not want to bash anymore.

I can usually always say good things about the atmosphere and staff here and even their sides are great but you cannot have success without GOOD MEAT. The standard has gone way down here from what it use to be and who ever is in charge needs to get it straightened out because a long time customer like me shouldn’t have to speak out about constant bad experiences the past few times like i am here today.

As a Danvers local I won’t totally give up on this place as i know it can be good like it once was, but i’m certainly not going back...