Ollie's Burgers & BBQ — Restaurant in Portsmouth

Their smoked foods taste to me like what I could only guess diesel fuel tastes like. The other food is ok, I suppose. I would never come to leave a review for just that, however. A couple of months ago after coming from the cemetery following the funeral of my step-daughter, some family and friends decided to meet at Ollie’s to wind down and to enjoy each others company, and to make the most out of a sad day. There were about 20-25 of us. (About half were elderly) As we walked in, no one was in sight, they weren’t busy and the first two sections were open in front. Being in sort of a zombie like state after the funeral and not really thinking about it we all just kind of followed each other to the section on the left as you walk in the door and sat down. It was around 2 pm. About 5-10 minutes later the owner comes out and says “Hey, the the server won’t be here for this section until 3, so unless you want to sit here until then, we will have to move you.” So some of us mutter sorry as we all start to get up and as we are, he keeps going on and on about how this isn’t a seat yourself restaurant and you have to wait to be seated.. ON and ON. So we are all kind of looking around at each other like wth, as he leads us over to the RIGHT section as you come in the door. Lol If it were up to me, we would have left, but with the crowd we had it was easier to just stay. Our servers were nice, though. I’m all about supporting local business, but I won’t be supporting this one anymore. 🤷‍♀️ There are still plenty out there who appreciate their customers. I’ll...

Our family of four visited what we thought was a super cute Western themed smokehouse. We travel a lot and are always on the lookout for great smoked meats and BBQ. They were somewhat busy but we were seated immediately at a table for 8. We waited for 15 minutes with servers passing us often before the waitress finally came to the table saying only, "There's just 4 of you?" She took our drink and app order and I asked to go ahead and order our meals too since I didn't want another long wait. For some reason, this seemed to throw her off. I asked for the smoked meat stuffed baked potato with pulled pork. She asked me again my drink order, then asked my food order again. I repeated my order three times. When it finally came out, it was a very small side baked potato with a small amount of melted cheddar and bacon bits. When I said that was not what I ordered, she instructed me the next time I come in, how to order it!?! They did correct it. She also ignored our requests for refills, but was in a hurry to bring to go boxes. The pulled pork was mushy and flavorless unless you used the BBQ sauce. The ribs option was 1/2 rack only, where most all smokehouses offer a full rack at a discount. The rib meat was thin and gristly on one end. The smoked Mac and cheese was little more than Kraft with BBQ sauce. My daughter said her burger was good, but onion rings were mushy. Their steak fries were great and the BBQ sauce itself was very good. Overall though, definitely not worth the price and disappointing. We will spend a little more and go to the...

Update: We have been back since my original review, and the owner assured us that he was unaware of the situation. He asked us to speak to him directly if there is ever another issue. He made it right and is giving our nephew any meal of his choice.

We love the food and atmosphere but there is dishonest wait staff working there. We sat in a certain, very impersonable waitresses section and brought to her attention that we would like to pay for our nephew and his date that were eating there also. We did and several days later brought it up to our nephew, and he informed us that he paid for his meal also. So, my guess was she pocketed the money for the meal. The sad part is that we talked to the manager about the issue, and nothing has been done. Cameras were supposed to be reviewed, and you would think that when they saw the problem, something would be done. Maybe her being disciplined in some way and a gift card given to us for the stolen money. We've been back, and nothing has been done. We do only sit in Austin's section now and always will as long as he is there. We only go back because the food and Austin are great. We've had other issues with the owner...