Brian's Bar-B-Q

Brian's Bar-B-Q
795 N. Spring Garden Ave.
DeLand, FL 32720
(386)736-6851
www.briansbbq.com

I planned on catching up with my buddy Chad just to chat about some recent job openings we had seen and to reconnect. Since Chad lives in Lake Mary and I am in Daytona Beach, he made the suggestion to meet in DeLand since it is in the middle. His suggestion was great since I feel DeLand has a lot of interesting restaurants.

For a few years there have been commercials on television for Brian's Bar-B-Q, yet I still had not been there. I know a couple that live out that way and asked them about Brian's one day and they just kind of shook their heads. They didn't really like it, but I know sometimes you have to find out for yourself. Since I really love BBQ and hadn't had any in a while, I decided to chance it. It is a good thing that I did.

Chad and I both were running a little bit late and I thought our planned arrival time of noon was going to put some real pressure on us. However, when I turned into the parking lot, I was surprised to see it sprinkled with cars. I thought it would have been much more crowded. I go in to wait for Chad and immediately get a feeling that I am in a Sonny's, with lots of wood tables, booths and dividers. The staff was very attentive as different people came to ask me if I was ready to be seated. I told them all I was waiting on somebody and they all told me to just let them know when we were ready.

Chad shows up and we get seated immediately. We are sitting there just chatting when the waitress comes to the table. She is very nice and extremely attentive to our every need. She takes our drink orders as we start to look through the menu. I was quite surprised at the extent of the menu. For a BBQ place, they serve a lot of different sandwiches, seafood, steaks and a range of soups and salads. When the waitress returns with our drinks I ask her if they have any specials for the day. They had a burger special, a rib special, a wing special and an all-you-can-eat chicken special. The chicken special was only $7.99 and included two sides. I decided I would keep it simple and get the sliced pork sandwich with fries and beans. Chad followed closely, but he went with the pulled pork sandwich.

We sat there catching up for about 10 minutes and it wasn't very long before she was back with our orders. Everything looked really good portion wise and I could tell it was going to taste good too. Our waitress asked if we needed sauces and we told her we did. This is where it got real interesting. She brought back about three bottles of sauce in the plastic squirt bottles we are all familiar with. I go to put the hot sauce on my sliced pork and was surprised to find they keep their sauces in a warmer. I find that to be a nice touch as one of my pet peeves is putting cold sauce or ketchup on hot food. What kind of sense does that make?

I put a good amount of sauce on my pork and take my first bite. The bun was nice and soft and the pork was tender and juicy. The sauce had a nice flavor to it, but I didn't find it to have much kick. The fries and beans were both served very hot, which is always to my liking. The only other thing I noticed was the meat could have been a little smokier. Overall though, it was a great sandwich and to me, this was a great find. I know I will go back there again sometime. After we ate our waitress was really trying to get us to take a to-go tea with us, but we both declined. It was funny how she kept going after us talking about how hot it was outside and how we are going to be thirsty later. I like it when your server feels comfortable enough to play with you a little bit. She was great!

For my first visit to Brian's Bar-B-Q I am going to give them four Stiffy's. If you are in DeLand and want some BBQ, I suggest you can't go wrong by stopping by Brian's.

Eat, drink and be merry!

Harry