So for work I was in Lexington, NC and of course that meant I had to get some Q. I knew it wouldn’t take long but I decided to eat at the first place I came across. Enter Smokey Joe’s. I was right at 11 so I did not expect it to be crowded and that was accurate for this place. There were not that many cars in the lot and I didn’t take anything from that since it was so early. Maybe I should have. As I was snapping photos and heading in I noticed there was no smell or presence of smoke anywhere. The same could be said for the inside. If not for the name and the inside decorations I would not have known I was in a BBQ joint.
I will say that I did enjoy the atmosphere. You could tell that they had been around for a long while and that the regulars came quite often. It seemed like the waitresses knew everyone by name and I liked that. They could tell I was not from around there and they were still very friendly and made the experience enjoyable.
Before I go into describing the food, I will make known that I am not a fan of this style of BBQ. Not the way it is cooked, but rather how it is prepared and served. I prefer pulled to chopped and let me add my own sauce not served already covered in sauce. Now I ordered the chopped pork platter with BBQ slaw and hush puppies. They serve the slaw and pork in the same small tray packed side by side and covered in sauce. Their red slaw is basically Cole slaw in BBQ sauce and I was not a huge fan of it. I didn’t really like the sauce either and since the pork was covered that made it hard to get a good feel for it. I was able to dig down below the sauce and get some on sauced pork and it was decent. It was moist and the flavor was decent, but definitely not what I expected in Lexington. The star of the show was definitely the hush puppies though. They were fried to perfection and they were gone pretty fast. There was a dipping sauce that came with them that was also very good. In fact, once I was finished with my puppies I poured a good bit of that dip over the pork and that definitely helped.
Because the atmosphere was so great I would definitely go back, but just not for BBQ. I would try one of their other items as it seemed like a good restaurant, and I would get hush puppies with whatever I ordered. If you happen to be in Lexington and want to check them out they are located at:
1101 S. Main Street
Lexington, NC 27292
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