Disappointing BBQ - Big Iron Horse, Barrington

I tried Big Iron Horse BBQ this week. I was disappointed since I had heard it was decent.

I had the brisket sandwich. The menu said Angus dry rubbed beef smoked 12 hours. It was served with something called Natural Cut fries. The fries looked like regular fries and were ok.

They had two sauces: traditional or chipotle maple. I got the latter one on the side. The brisket was tender with no smoke smell or taste. It was extremely dry. I didn’t care for the chipotle maple sauce, so I asked for some of the traditional. It was nothing special, but it did help the dry beef.

Oh, this was the first BBQ place I’ve been that didn’t have sweet tea.

I cannot recommenced:

Big Iron Horse
117 S. Hough
Barrington, IL

Oh, walking around looking for this place, I was surprised on how many other restaurants were in the downtown area.

D.

But how was the sauce?

For as many BBQ places Chicago has it is not known for their BBQ. Sauce maybe...

In the last couple of years a few places (Smoque, Honky Tonk, RUB) have risen to the top and are producing quality product and even a chain (City) but on an average...

Thanks for the heads up!

A review based on tasting one dish on a single visit has little usefulness.

scottsol wrote:A review based on tasting one dish on a single visit has little usefulness.

A review that describes bbq as having no smoke is useful to me.

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Panther in the Den wrote:For as many BBQ places Chicago has it is not known for their BBQ...In the last couple of years a few places (Smoque, Honky Tonk, RUB) have risen to the top

Until Uncle John's, Lem's, Honey 1 and others who've mastered the art of the aquarium smoker shut down, I'll have to vociferously disagree with everything in this post. But that's a bit off topic for this thread so I'll leave it at that.

ronnie_suburban wrote:

scottsol wrote:A review based on tasting one dish on a single visit has little usefulness.

A review that describes bbq as having no smoke is useful to me.

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I'll go one better: I don't even need a review of a bite of a dish to know I don't want to trek out to Barrington to try this place (or, for that matter, walk across the street if I happened to be in Barrington). Take a look at the menu: In addition to BBQ, there are salads, burgers, tacos, burritos, sandwiches, stuffed pizza, and thin crust pizza. Making consistently good bbq in a restaurant setting is hard. Doing it while also filling orders for that broad of a menu remains, until I'm proven wrong, impossible.

i am so effing sick of bad bbq apologistas!

I’m no apologist, but I do know that consistency is a major bugaboo of BBQ restaurants. I also know that brisket is a particularly difficult cut to do well. So a single visit where only brisket is sampled should not not be assumed to be representative of a restaurants output.

The overly varied menu may give a clue, but it was never mentioned in the OP.

The place may very likely be a dog, but the review is far too narrow in scope to be relied on.

Clarence Beeks wrote:i am so effing sick of bad bbq apologistas!

And I'm sick of mercenaries like yourself Mr. Beeks who are on the payroll of Duke & Duke! Planting evidence on poor Winthorpe, framing him for drugs, and getting that orange crop report before it went public! But what I really want to know is how did you escape from that gorilla cage?

I have been in 'BBQ Cities' and they produce stellar BBQ day in and day out. Any place that doesn't doesn't last long.

In Chicago we have to put up with (or in my case given up on, I will never waste my money getting the expensive ribs) all of the places with the exception of a rare few that can produce.

In my mind traffic has been so low that most places cannot keep fresh product on hand.

Don't get me wrong, I like Lem's and stopping by almost any day and having to stand in line almost always insures a fresh product.

I am sure that Gary would stop at Honey 1 or Uncle Johns and get the star treatment and thus fresh product. I never advertise my connections and often get served a something different.

Panther in the Den wrote:I am sure that Gary would stop at Honey 1 or Uncle Johns and get the star treatment and thus fresh product. I never advertise my connections and often get served a something different.

I don't advertise anything, I'm just me, enthusiastic BBQ/food/restaurant loving me. Whether I get "star treatment" may be debatable, though if the BBQ/food/restaurant is not good to start it makes no difference what kind of treatment you get.

Speaking of star treatment, I was in Cincinnati last week ate at Mitchell’s Fish Market across the river in Kentucky. Had laughable service and less than stellar food, our server was so bumbling it was actually humorous. The mediocre clam chowder inspired me to make my own yesterday. ---> Link

star or not, you usually get better treatment when it's clear you know what you're talking about

Sorry about my review. I’m not going to go back to a restaurant where I had a bad meal just to give everyone a more comprehensive review. Maybe I had the only example and everything else on their menu is terrific. I’ll never know. If you want to dismiss it as not useful, go ahead.

As for the sauce, I didn’t care for the chipotle maple. It was sweet, without the depth of flavor I expected from the maple. The chipotle just made it weird. The traditional as I mentioned was nothing special, more like a little spicy ketchup.

D.

dodger wrote:I’m not going to go back to a restaurant where I had a bad meal just to give everyone a more comprehensive review.

You made it clear enough in your initial post that it was your first visit. And based on your observations -- and their 'jack of all trades' menu -- I'm not likely to try it, even if I happened to be nearby. For others here, that wouldn't be enough information to form a meaningful opinion.

In the case of the latter group, I do hope that when they do eventually try it, they'll let us know what they thought, even if their opinion reflects only a single visit. These forums have shown us many times over the years how useful a group of single-visit posts about the same place can be.

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