Fishin' Pig RVA — Restaurant in Short Pump

It here recently and was very impressed. Read an article in the Richmond’s Times Dispatch about the place. That’s how we ended up here. Otherwise, I would’ve never heard of it. Everything from the service to the food was excellent. There was a 30 minute wait when we walked in and there were a lot of open booths the whole time. I’m assuming they were short on help since it’s a new location.

As we were waiting, I could hear them telling people that they were out of pulled pork. They were out of potato salad and something else I don’t remember. This was around 4 PM on a Saturday. I guess that shows a lot of people are eating there or getting takeout. I’ve heard of good barbecue joints in Texas running out of food, but that’s because lines form at like 5 AM before the place even opens.

I guess they have to gauge over the next couple weeks the number of customers they can expect on certain days and times. We drove about a half hour to get here and really wanted the pork but opted for something else. The ribs were really good definitely have a unique flavored sauce on them and you can also get them dry.

Got the buffalo wings, hush puppies and the bang bang shrimp for appetizers. Man, all of them were very good. The shrimp are big sized and had great flavor and we’re cooked perfectly. The buffalo wings were probably some of the best I’ve had in my life, and I consider myself a wing aficionado. They were so tender you could tell they were fresh wings not frozen. Nice light smoky flavor but crispy on the outside the way they should be. Homemade blue cheese was no joke either.

For the main meal, I got the catfish which was supposed to be with a side of pork but since they were out, I just paid extra and got a half rack of ribs. Already commented on the ribs so I can say the catfish was awesome too. Very flavorful and tender. The breading was nice and crispy not that Really flat fine type you get it other establishments almost like a fried chicken breading. My wife got the brisket and it was so freaking good nice and tender and juicy. Baked beans for some of the best I’ve ever had to and I eat at a lot of barbecue places.

Again, hopefully they can get enough staff hired where all tables are filled at all times and they don’t run out of food early in the day. But we’ll definitely be back.

**Our waitress was as attentive and nice as some of the waitresses staff we’ve had at Ruth’s Chris steakhouse where you pay anywhere from $300-$400 for a dinner for two with...

Drove about 40 minutes to get to this location about 3 weeks ago. Didn’t start off really good as we walked into the lobby and we were completely ignored by 1 male and 2 female employees that were chatting at what I would consider the hostess counter/area. We had to actually ask if we could be seated. Once seated it took our female server quite a while to come over to get our drink orders, however she was pretty polite once she arrived. I asked a couple of questions about menu items to which she couldn’t answer. Instead of her offering to check with someone else to get me an answer she just said that she didn’t know.

Next I ordered the wing appetizer. Wings were cooked well, however they lacked any real flavor. I asked her a question about the wings which she said she would get an answer from the kitchen. I waited, waited, and waited for her to come from the kitchen with an answer, which she never did. I was trying to wait, but didn’t want the wings to get cold. When she returned from the kitchen she walked by my table and went to the hostess area to join the employee chat session.

I ended up getting up approaching her at the hostess area, and asked her for the answer to my question.

I next received my catfish dish which was missing one piece of fish. Once again my server was nowhere to be found, so I went to hostess area to ask for a manager. The manager came over a short time later, acknowledged that I was missing a piece of fish, and returned with the fish in a timely fashion.

Our server never responded back to the table to check if we needed anything, and I had to flag her down for refills, and even to get our bill/check.

The funny thing is that when we received our bill/check it had a review card attached to it. I filled that card out, listed my issues and the name of the server and hand delivered it to the lady that identified herself as the manager. I think that the review card was just thrown in the trash after I left. The reason that I say this is I believe that when you fill out the card and give email address you are also signing up to receive promotions and information from the restaurant. They obviously didn’t sign me up, as I have not received any emails from them.

With the things I have heard about this place I really wanted to enjoy it, however it was really a huge disappointment. Staff is inattentive.

I didn’t feel the need to write my servers name down because I thought they would actually use the review card...

Service and atmosphere are fine--it's slightly nicer than the typical strip mall restaurant of the area. But the food ... yikes. Even two stars feels like it's being at least somewhat generous.

Richmond is not hurting for good BBQ. If you're looking for solid pulled pork, ribs, brisket, catfish, etc., you can find it at Deep Run, Buzz and Ned's, ZZQ, Smohk, etc. We tasted practically everything here at Fishin' Pig, and nothing could genuinely stand up to any of the area's better BBQ spots.

Positives: Hush puppies were small but fine. Ribs seemed to be smoked well enough, and were plenty tender, but like a lot of other stuff here were badly lacking in seasoning and close to flavorless. Griddled andouille sausages were excellent. Cole slaw was fine. And that's about the end of the positives.

Negatives: A much longer list. Pulled pork was relatively dry and just incredibly bland. It has been a while since I've run across restaurant pulled pork with such an absolute lack of seasoning and flavor. Pulled pork pablum. This lack of any kind of verve affected most of the items on our sampler platter. Chicken wings were gummy and uninteresting. Ribs were desperately in need of seasoning to lift them from the doldroms. Even the flagship Kansas City BBQ sauce is odd, unpleasantly dominated by molasses and what tastes like artificial whiskey/oak barrel flavoring that the ingredients list calls "whiskey spice."

But that really all pales in comparison to how bad the brisket was. Incredibly overcooked, tough, dry and tasteless all at once. How a restaurant that is completely full can be serving brisket that tastes like it was sliced the day before, I do not know, but this was some of the very worst beef brisket I've ever had, anywhere. Dull brown slices of beef that were halfway to becoming leather. No chef should have let brisket like that out of their kitchen; it reflects badly on anyone who would serve it.

The only reason they're getting a second star is that the place has only been open a month, and the fact that there were a few items (the andouille, the slaw) that were pleasant enough. But when you're a BBQ restaurant and the first word that comes to mind in describing the pork, ribs and brisket is "flavorless," that's not...