Sweet Magnolia Smokehouse — Restaurant in Phoenix

I made my first visit to Sweet Magnolia Smokehouse today. I went after seeing the high reviews, putting it at the top of the list on both the organic rankings and in collections for BBQ on Yelp. The restaurant was strong on the ancillary areas of service, staff, and ambiance, but it fell short in the core competencies of food quality, taste, and price.

Sweet Magnolia is located on Chandler Blvd just west of I-10 about 1/2 mile, placing it just inside Phoenix city limits (the Ahwatukee area). Since this was a 25-minute drive for me, I went expecting something very strong. But I was disappointed. I arrived at 12:30 pm on a weekday, right during lunch hour. Normal assumption would be that it would be full or very busy. But it was empty. One customer picked up a togo order, and we were the only other customers for the next hour! Woah. This isn't a good sign.

We ordered two 2 item plates with 2 sides each. We tried the brisket, chicken, and baby back ribs for meats. We got the mac & cheese, baked beans, and potato salad for sides. The best meat, by far, was the ribs, which were juicy, plump, and meaty. The chicken was dry. The brisket was ok, but not cooked to the point of being nicely broken down by good long process. It was ok flavor but not fall apart moist. Overall, great BBQ should highlight great brisket, and this failed. All the meat was only lukewarm or cold. Nothing came out hot. The sides were good, but not surprisingly good.

The meals cost $20 each, with drinks, tips, and tax on top of that. After all that and a generous tip, our food for 2 people was $60 out the door. This was far too expensive for lackluster food.

The dining area is a standard single row of tables, and the room was nice and clean. The staff was very polite, kind and helpful.

While this BBQ joint shows excellent review rankings from many, either those were old experiences or the day I visited was a one-off flop. Either way, this place was below average and not good enough to warrant a second visit. I can find an excellent brisket at Caldwells, a great rib rack at BobbyQs, and hot food almost anywhere else. I do hope they can turn this around and meet up to the other review and rankings they seem to have. I wish them well, but I won't...

Had a Groupon for this restaurant so we figured we'd try it because we love barbecue. It had mixed reviews of either really great or really bad so we didn't have any expectations either way. I got the one meat and two side combo and my fiance got the two meat and two side combo and we both got a drink. I got the barbecue brisket, sweet potatoes and baked beans and he got the barbecued brisket and potato salad and baked beans. I asked them to trim the fat off my brisket which is an option on the menu. The brisket was very good very tender and the barbecue sauce is really good not too sweet and definitely has a vinegar tang which we liked. The baked beans were awesome really good spice and flavor, the sweet potatoes were good not really sweet and they were smashed not in a casserole way which I really liked the only problem was they were kind of watery like they had just been boiled and hadn't been drained well. My fiance loved the brisket and the hot link and loved the beans and really liked the potato salad which had the skin on the potatoes which we both like also. It came with a cornbread muffin which was good but a little bit dry, but we just got some butter to put on it and it was good. It was a little pricier than expected it was $50 for both of us, what we didn't notice was that they charge an additional $2 for the brisket, which is on the menu but we didn't see it lol. If I was in the area I would go back again and eat but I wouldn't drive the 30 minutes from our house to there just to eat. The woman behind the counter was very helpful and very nice and the...

Ordered lunch for my guys because they worked hard. We chose barbque. Got on line to order for delivery. Tried tracking the order but the delivery time kept changing. We got our food to find that they were apparently running out of food cause the portions were absolutely shorted, the meat was dry. They couldn’t even put enough barbque sauce on the food to taste (I thought I paid for sauce, it’s on the menu). The Mac N Cheese was so dry I couldn’t even eat it. The problem continued when I looked for a receipt and found a server receipt stapled to the bag. The problem is that the receipt I received was a lot less than what I was charged on my card. I immediately called the restaurant and spoke to a short attitude employee sarcastically informing me that I need to contact DoorDash for a receipt. Very unprofessional and disrespectful. Come to find out, using the restaurant application for DoorDash Cost me not only a delivery fee, but also a service fee. Kind of like charging a gratuity with informing you. Long story short the restaurant refused to help and DoorDash seems to think this is ok. I was informed that I need to wait 3 days for my receipt from my bank. In the meantime I can’t get refunded by my company because I do not have a proper receipt and my family eats the bill. Hope you guys are proud of yourself. The food definitely was not worth this huge headache. I will never order from Sweet Magnolia Smokehouse again or recommend them to anyone. Wish I could give...