Country Club BBQ — Restaurant in West Peoria

Review Date: September 25th, 2019

You need not arrive on a horse to be allowed entry.

Ever since this place opened, I have only heard great things about it. With my mom loving BBQ and her birthday lunch coming up, I asked if she wanted to come here. She said “yes” before I even finished asking. Her love for BBQ is that strong.

So, we arrived on a slow Wednesday afternoon. The parking lot was spacious with only a few cars taking up spots. We parked and headed in with our empty bellies. Once inside, we were greeted by wood and I mean wood. Wood everywhere… which is pretty usual for a BBQ place, if you’ve never been. The Country Club was no different. Our bartender/server told us we can sit anywhere and she would be right with us. My mom picked out a seat and we had menus in front of us not a minute or two later.

After pouring over the menu for about 10 minutes, we both decided to get the pulled pork sandwiches with french fries. As we waited for our food, we looked over what BBQ sauces they offered. Our table had 3 to pick from: Blueberry Moonshine, Rootbeer Reduction, and Carolina IPA. Looking around, I noticed there was another flavor, Dark Ale Mustard, at another table; I got up and snagged it.

Before we knew it, our food was right in front of us and boy did it look appetizing. With 4 flavors of BBQ sauce to choose from, I couldn’t pick which one I wanted to try. They all had unique names/flavors, so it was a tough choice. In these kinds of predicaments, I usually use my fries to dip in small samples of each flavor and see which one I like. The fries were delicious and only tasted better after sampling them in the sauces. After bouncing between the Dark Ale Mustard and Blueberry Moonshine, I settled on the mustard to put on my pulled pork. First bite in, I knew it needed more sauce. I flipped the sandwich over and added more sauce to the side I didn’t put any on.

Second bite in, I knew there was something wrong. It wasn’t the fact that the sauce was sparse because I loaded that sucker up. It was the fact that the pulled pork was dry to the bone. With each bite, I would grab a bottle of sauce and add it to where I was going to have the next bite and even then, the dryness would penetrate all flavor. The bun and sauce had plenty of flavor on their own and the pork was juicy on the surface, but I couldn’t help be disappointed in how dry it was. This is just a wild guess, but I am guessing the pulled pork was sitting in a steamer/warmer all afternoon.

My two other small issues with the Country Club was the soda and the atmosphere. I grabbed the RC Cola version of Mountain Dew and my mom got lemonade. The soda was fine at first but then I noticed that it was mostly the syrup that is used in fountain drinks. I could barely finish it as it tasted like melted cotton candy after a certain point. Now, for the atmosphere, it just felt dirty. The place itself is clean and all that… it just had an air of dirtiness to it.

As for the service, our waitress/bartender was fantastic. She was working the bar but made many trips to our table to make sure everything was going great. It sucks to hear so much hype about a place to come out disappointed after visiting. I had a great time hanging out with my mom and treating her to lunch; I just hope we visited at a wrong time and the place does actually live up to the hype and good online...

Food and atmosphere is excellent! Let's talk about the food. Gotta have the BBQ pork egg rolls, they are going so good! Almost addictive!!! We've ordered them for our Superbowl party before, that's how much we love these lil gems! The homemade tater tots are worth the trip all by themselves! Everything is very good here as we come here often. If something isn't quite up to par, they don't hesitate to make it right. Service is outstanding, always bending over backwards to make sure you're always having the best dining experience you can. I didn't think my sweet tea tested right. I mentioned to my server, she took it back to a guy at the bar. I watched as he thoughtfully tasted it, poured it out, picked up the pitcher it was poured from and examined it a little before dumping it out. Going to the kitchen, made a fresh pitcher and a fresh glass. Honestly, he put some Time into this that he probably didn't have since it was busy. I was very impressed! Most places would've just brought me more of the same tea. He really made me feel like that was the most important thing to him at that moment. The tea I got back was very good!!! Prices are very reasonable. The amount of food you get is crazy!!! There's enough meat piled up on those buns for 2 sandwiches! Tender ribs falling off the bone! Seriously, I can't say enough good things about this place! 1 star off because parking isn't great. Just my opinion but it's the parking lot they're stuck with, I know, I shouldn't hold it against them. But, hard to get a good parking spot, lol, but worth...

Pretty sure this is my first time ever visiting Country Club BBQ, we were driving around in that area recently and realized this so we planned our lunch date! Upon walking into the restaurant I noticed it was a bit outdated, I'm not sure how long it's been open but it seemed like it's been there for a while. There is a big bar right when you first walk into the restaurant and we were able to seat ourselves. There's actually quite a big menu with lots of options it was a bit hard to decide. We got the chips and queso as an appetizer and it was actually quite good! Unfortunately, they were out of rib tips so I didn't get to try those but I did have the two-piece meal with the pork and chicken with sides of fries and baked beans, it also came with a side of toast. There were four options of barbecue sitting on the table and I enjoyed being able to taste all those to see which one I liked the most! We got there right around 11:40 on Sunday and actually had to wait quite a bit that's the only reason I've given four stars. The food was great and the service was great it was just a long wait, I think we were there for about an hour and a half. My son ordered the all you can eat wings for $18. He really like the spicy hot barbecue much better than the Nashville hot. My husband had the three-piece meal and the sausage was his favorite, he ordered cornbread as a side and it was quite the large piece so he shared with me! Looking forward to going back again and trying something else...