R&R BBQ — Restaurant in Spanish Fork

This will be a very thorough review. Punchline? don’t spend $20 per person here. Go to literally any other bbq place in Utah.

The food wasn’t good enough to be called BBQ and not worth the exorbitant price. Decent food that I would go back for if I had paid $30 for the meal instead of $50.

**General overview? It was all a little spicy in all the same ways. Not bad, but also nothing special.

Below I rate the service, meats, sides, and sauces.

SERVICE? Good. They were very nice. I just had to go back for my bbq sauces that they forgot.

MEATS -

Pulled Pork - The one part of the meal that we were modestly pleased with (aside from the sides). Cooked well…. So basically what you would expect from any bbq place because pulled pork is easy.

Turkey - No meat should be cut as thick as the turkey was cut. It was a disgrace to bbq everywhere. What might have been tasty turkey was meh, simply because of the cut. Sad, really.

Brisket - I don’t care who you are or what planet you’re from, brisket should never be cut in chunks. If cantaloupe chunks decided to be meat, they would be R&R bbq’s brisket.

Chicken - Why was this chicken so spicy? I’ll never know. I’ll admit, getting past the spiciness, the cool on the chicken was great. If this was just a chicken review, it would be 3.5 stars.

Sausage - Honestly not sure whether this was a home recipe or if they took jalepeno Johnsonville sausages and smoked them. Nothing special. I should have just gone to the store for these.

SIDES

Mashed Potatoes w/ gravy - potentially the best part of the meal. Super happy with them.

Hush puppies - should be called hush puppies. Should be called deep fried cornmeal. Sorry excuse for a good thing.

Mac n Cheese - embarrassingly boring and a little dry. My wife liked them because they were simple. I didn’t like them because…. Enjoy food that tastes good.

Banana Pudding - tasty but over-priced. Not much else to say about it. Can’t say it was bad, but wouldn’t come back just for this.

SAUCES

Not worth mentioning anything other than the fact that they have a Carolina bbq sauce that has no mustard. Am I mad? ABSO-frikkin-LUTELY. A vinegar-based bbq sauce that’s runny AF? Call it Tennessee bbq. Call it vinegar bbq. Don’t get anyone’s hopes up by calling it Carolina bbq. This alone would keep me from EVER...

⭐️⭐️½ – “When the roll steals the spotlight, your BBQ has problems.”

"Cold meat, hot mess, and a roll that’s out here doing all the heavy lifting."

Finished donating plasma, and I needed a protein pick-me-up. Nothing fancy—just a reliable plate of BBQ. I rolled into R&R BBQ in Spanish Fork hoping for something solid. Not expecting Texas levels of greatness, but hey, three types of meat and some brisket nachos sounded like a decent post-plasma reward.

Unfortunately… the reward never showed up.

🍖 Turkey – 5.5 Dry as drywall. I’ve had more moisture in a Salt Flats summer. No flavor, no juice—just sadness.

🦴 Ribs – 5.8 Tough and chewy. Not in the “smoked to perfection” way—in the “should’ve been cooked another hour” way.

🌭 Sausage – 6.9 Actually decent. Good spice, good snap. But cold. Like “just out of the fridge” cold. Which took all the joy out of it.

🧀 Brisket Nachos – 6.1 Queso was fine, but where was the brisket? I ordered brisket nachos, not queso with a side of disappointment. Amount of meat was straight-up laughable.

🥖 Roll – 7.0 And here’s the twist: the roll was the best part of the entire meal. Warm, fluffy, and flavorful. It’s a problem when bread outshines the BBQ.

🧼 Atmosphere & Service

Lobby looked like a food fight just ended. Bathroom? Not somewhere you want to spend more than two seconds in. And the staff? They weren’t rude, but they looked like they’d just clocked into purgatory. Service was cold—but hey, so was the food, so… points for consistency?

Bottom line: 🥶 Cold BBQ is unforgivable. 🧻 A gross bathroom kills any appetite. 🥖 If the roll’s the highlight, you’re in the wrong restaurant.

Final verdict: A disappointing post-plasma meal that left me wondering why I didn’t just hit up a gas station burrito instead. R&R? More like...

R&R BBQ in Spanish Fork, Utah, serves the worst BBQ I have ever had the misfortune of tasting and throwing away. Everything my wife and I had was inedible. We ordered takeout meats. We didn't bother with sides because my wife Sue and I make better sides. My wife is the 'Sue' of "Sue and Gloria's Baked Bean" recipe in several online URLs. I believe that the Provo R&R location has a better pitmaster and better food handling staff.

The half rack of ribs was so undercooked that I couldn't bite a piece off any of the bones. The brisket was so overcooked that it couldn't be sliced. It was dry and gray and simply crumbled when the girl tried to slice it. We had ordered slices but just got a pile of crumbled bits. It tasted like cardboard. There was no hint of a rub, and sauce just made it taste like sauced cardboard. The chicken and pulled pork were dry. It looked like the brisket, chicken and pork had been sitting on a steam table for days.

My wife and I have eaten BBQ all over the United States from my time in the Army in Georgia to my time in with EPA Virginia and our 20 years in Texas with Texas A&M University. I've been cooking Texas style BBQ since 1999. We have had some truly world beating BBQ in Columbus, GA (Big Boy BBQ), Greensboro, NC (Bernie's) and several places in Texas (Austin [Franklin], Brian [Fargo's], Ft. Stockton [Fish Powell's], Llano [Tumlinson's] and Midland [Jr. Urias Up In Smoke]).

And we've had some unbelievably awful BBQ in the same towns: Columbus, GA (Country's), Greensboro, NC (Smokey Bones), and Texas (Austin [Stubbs], Bryan [Tom's], Ft. Stockton [Texas Smokin'], Llano [True Texas BBQ] and Midland [Dickey's].

However, of all the terrible BBQ my wife and I have ever had to throw away, R&R in Spanish Fork, UT...