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 reviews it has.