Smoking Pig BBQ — Restaurant in San Jose

Found this place simply by searching Google Maps for nearby restaurants. It was about a mile from my hotel and BBQ sounded good so off I went. I got there around 5 or 6 and it was about 3/4 full. I'm not familiar with San Jose so I don't know if this is true, but it doesn't appear to be in the best of areas. My hotel surroundings backed this theory up though... Anyway, I walked in and heard a female voice ask if it was just 1 in my party. Considering there were about 6 waitresses in the tiny area, I just looked in the general direction and said yes. The tall one came out of the group holding a menu and sat me at the booth just right of the door. It took about 10 minutes before a different girl showed up and took my drink order. I was a little annoyed by this considering they weren't super busy yet. Especially having that many servers on the floor...She returned promptly with my soda and took my order. She was friendly and offered suggestions since this was my first visit. Nah, I'll try the ribs/brisket combo with mashed potatoes, mac n cheese, and cornbread. A different woman brought the food in about 10 min. Then an older guy walks by and gives me a refill. Not 3 minutes passes and yet another woman (thin Asian) stops and asks me how I'm doing. Once I'm finished, my original server (believe her name was Joanna) asks me about dessert. I had read excellent reviews about their peanut butter pie so that's what I got. Well now how's about I do an actual review!? The ribs were a little tougher than I'd like but had a good flavor. Not much meat to them though. Also, they were lukewarm at best - just like the brisket. The brisket was somewhat bland, but after adding the BBQ sauce found on the table, problem solved. The potatoes and mac n cheese were both hot (not too difficult though, considering they're scooped out of a heating pan) and delicious. And it's a shame the dude in a previous post didn't get his cornbread because it's actually really good too. Then lastly, you must try the peanut butter pie at least once. It's creamy and smooth, and sits on an Oreo crust. As far as the restaurant itself goes, it's not very spacious so I can see seating being a problem during dinner time. The parking lot is not big-car friendly either. The parking spaces seem narrower than normal and it's one-way in and one-way out, and it's quite a tight turn to get around in there. Overall I say it's worth a visit or two. It has that old diner type feel to it; with some booths around the wall and a bunch of metal tables crammed together...

Fremont location to Smoking Pig BBQ Company,

Mothers Day, Worst dining experience ever. It all started when we showed up on Mothers Day, its nice and crowded as almost all restaurants should be on this fine day. We met our Hostess who was pretty friendly and attentive, no problems yet until she left the table and pretty waitress comes over to ask us what we'd like, ordered sodas and waited for her return. 20 minutes later and she does not come back. So we check with the hostess and like a rock star employee she gets us a new waitress to take our order and she was very attentive and got our orders in. Okay, a few minutes later we found a recluse spider crawling on our table, dropped from the rafters maybe. That's a pretty dangerous spider to be bit by in case your allergic to its venom. That's not the point that drove us out, what drove us out of the restaurant from anger was when our order was put in last when we ordered far before the table that just came in ten minutes after our arrival. We waited so long for our meal that we did get up and made our way for the door because its insulting to been served later. Anyhow, they chased us down and begged us to come back and they offered us free dessert for all of us if we returned. They rushed our meal finally but that was pretty dismal. Brisket I ordered was very leathery, dry and over done and the Cajun fries for my side was kind of pathetic. but one thing i noticed the most was that my meal even though it said it comes with corn bread, i didn't get it with my meal. The waitress that served us was pretty embarrassed and afraid to return to our table to even give us a refill of our drinks. I don't know who to blame other than the entire restaurant for the horrible mothers day experience.

I would do this place a favor and NEVER RETURN HERE for anything, Oh yeah, they also never honored they're free dessert...

This was our second choice for lunch after church. It wasn't crowded at all. I have eaten at the Fremont and former Campbell locations, so we took a chance on this location on Fourth Street, the light industrial section. The food was decent and came quickly. I would have preferred they took another 2-3 minutes to make sure all the food was hot. I had the $11.00 Brunswick Stew, which is made from the previous day's meat remnants - delicious! It's like beef stew but better with chunks of sirloin, pulled pork and shredded chicken, corn, potatoes, lima beans, and onions in a tomato-based broth. Totally worth it. Its served with a side of honey cornbread that wasn't even warm. The butter never melted. Hubs had the pulled pork plate, which was huge, tender, and tasty but cold. He said if he hadn't been so hungry, he would have sent it back. The plate comes with two sides and he ordered the potato salad, made with mayo, red onion, and celery. He liked it. This location has a decent beer list - hubs was able to order a Deschutes Porter. And while they don't have much in the way of hot drinks, I was able to have hot tea, Lipton Green, with perfectly hot water. The big disappointment was the restrooms. One was out of order and made the restaurant smell bad. The other was totally disgusting. It was poorly lit, no working light over the sink, no soap, and no hot water! The walls and tile were dirty and at one point, someone attempted to close the gap between the tile and the floor with caulk. The job was so poorly done that the result is a bumpy, dirty, icky-looking mess. Mind you, this is a sit-down restaurant. I've seen neater, cleaner, better stocked and lighted restrooms at some gas stations. (I travel a lot on I-5). For that reason alone, I wouldn't...