The Magnolia Pit — Restaurant in Shreveport

My husband and I are from Dallas Ft Worth and have had to relocate here for 3 years with the Air Force. The hardest part has been the lack of good food. I’m going to be brutally honest here speaking 100% for the both of us.

Most people on here writing reviews are being too nice. Bad reviews but still giving 3 and 4 stars? First, expenses of everything are way up and if a restaurant isn’t delivering good food, everyone should know the truth. Either other businesses lie and recommend places here out of some small-town cultish blind sense of loyalty thinking this will somehow give them more business or someone’s tastebuds died a long time ago from poor eating. The lying, bad recommendations establishes a distrust for all parties and leads people to not trust a word the recommender says which leads to bad business ultimately anyway. In serving a bad business (scratch my back I’ll scratch yours)who ultimately will not make it prolonging their misery is just bad business. It’s not smart business. Why do you all not learn this is part of why Shreveport/Bossier City keeps having failure to launch. The mentality keeps this place buried in failure. So does the overhead corrupt city and state government here. Any state with this bad of roads throughout the entire state says a huge red flag of corruption from the state down to the broken system. Get outside of this area and state, learn true business and true taste then come back and figure out how to get a better system going in this state to kick corrupt mess out. And quit lying to each other. The potatoes salad tasted like ammonia, no joke. If I could describe what the ammonia smell taste like when having hair colored, this would be it. The okra had no flavor and I cannot even describe what was wrong with it because we have never come across this. I grew up with true southern cooking by the way. Collard greens and all. The meats? Were these even real meats or were they chemically compounded in someone’s bad chemistry lab as fake tasteless meat. We couldn’t even describe what we ate, only that we felt personally violated. Go try Terry Black’s in DFW and you’ll never be the same. Nor will you believe how you could ever eat this. We could not eat it. -Mac and cheese… don’t know what this was either. -My favorite food in the world has also been violated… fried green tomatoes. Just what? Tasteless thin green tomatoes that should be fresh and tart covered in very mushy, tasteless batter and then covered in what may be similar to poorly made hotel dip. Never. Fried green tomatoes should be flaky, crisp, firm-soft and tart with maybe a side of aioli or something such as a side of very light avocado cream, light creamy ranch or the like you could even sprinkle the flaky crusts with tiny pieces of fresh parsley. But whatever these were, it was a tasteless, mushy, inedible mess.

I am honestly not wanting to leave a bad review but never have me and my husband felt so violated over this bad of food to the point that none of this tasted even like real food. It is sad. And everyone here lies to each other detrimentally and not helpfully so. If sets you all up for failure and helps bad thrive as well as make people not trust what others say. Yes you can still be tactful and tasteful when doing so but this place is just as bad as the small town I grew up in and that is now dying due to this same mentality this place/city has. I have lost more money on other businesses desperate loyalty when all its serving is to cultivate an atmosphere of distrust and revolt. You cannot make it big here nor have true, good growth because this city such as it is refuses to have real growth and rise above whatever weird mentality roots here. Learn real business so you can run it and it will also teach you to run out the corrupt garbage (and why) that is running these cities and state. It (the system) doesn’t want you to do better because you will then know better. Until then, places like these will be mostly what this city has.

Ki Mexico, El Cabo Verde, Tea Mochi is truly above and beyond...

To start: this place is mid. It could have been because we did a pick up order. Maybe it's better in person. I will give this place a second try.

Atmosphere: they completely ruined how open the restaurant was from when it was Ghost Ramen. Much better feel and vibe. Now everything is closed off and small with what looked like very little seating. Also it SMELLS dusty musty in there. As soon as we walked in there is an awkward divider in the door that some of Shreveports widests wouldn't be able to comfortably walk through. So if your 2 something with that cushion for the pushing, keep that in mind. Next you'll get hit with a musty moth ball odor. It's dim lit (I might have been blinded by the sun before walking in). Not a BBQ joint vibe tbh. The front area host was very friendly and greeted us right away despite some other staff trying to talk to him. Other staff person didn't greet or smile at all at us. Which is minor.

The food: Ordered a single meat brisket. And a four meat with all meats. Both had the Mac n cheese, cornbread, then corn and baked beans. The brisket: moist and looks almost greasy at first. Very very fatty (maybe I got bad cuts) and very very thin cut. The sauce that comes with it tastes like sweet baby rays (shout out Zuckerberg) which distracted from the flavor the brisket had. Flavor of the brisket was centralized to the outter blackening so it was limited with each bite due to slice sizes. The chicken(?) was dry, sausage was good, the pork lacked flavor. The corn was good, just a basic grilled corn. The corn bread is a bit dry and heavily buttered/greased. I genuinely enjoyed it. The baked beans were heavily peppered. Like, I couldn't taste the baked beans sauce without it being overwhelmed with pepper taste. The Mac and cheese is like any box white cheddar except they added some sort of chili crunch or something crispy... can't really tell what it's supposed to be... to the top and it does not move well on my taste buds.

The banana fosters pudding is the single most redeeming factor but it also has its issues. It's very thin for a pudding. It does have vanilla wafers in it and they haven't been sitting in it a while (they still have some crispness and hold to them rather than being mushy) There is no bananas to be found. The banana fosters topping was overwhelming on top until mixed in but it gives a nice cinnamon-y flavor to the pudding. Best part of the meal.

Most of it gives off the vibe that it was bought at Sam's Club and thrown together. Not awful but also not completely spectacular either.

There's a good bit of other places that you can pay the same amount for much better quality of food and MORE food.

I WILL be trying it again though to see how it fairs a...

Like many others this week we saw an article about this restaurant and being a barbeque lover who's frequented spots like Killens and others famous spots on Texas I was keen to try.

Parking is odd but works. The place has about 9 or tables. So it doesn't take much to fill them up. I spoke with John the owner when I came in. Super friendly guy and the staff that manned the front were really positive and helpful. Extra marks for good personnel.

I ordered the burnt ends as an appetizer. The quality of the meat was excellent. Had a vinegar based bbq sauce in the presentation which I liked but the rest of my party preferred the standard smoked bbq sauce (it is very good).

We had a 3 meat plate with brisket, sausage (down home), and turkey. The brisket was well smoked and moist, nice change compared to some of the competition. Sausage was standard local down home which is to say great pretty light on the smoke honestly. I have a feeling it would be a bit heavier if you caught them during lunch. Finally turkey. Nicely smoked and very moist. The meats all impressed. The best BBQ in the area.

The sides were solid. Baked beans were better than average though not as good as Podnuhs. Mac and cheese was good but the noodles were a little firmer than my son cared for. Corn was... Corn. I was really looking forward to the dirty rice. It was not cooked enough. Kind of crunchy. It was the only slight letedown but seemed like it might have been great.

Finally drinks are bottled. With Shreveport water that's certainly understandable.

Definitely worth...