Hayward Son.

I remembered this place from about ten years ago. I went there at lunch during a spring day of painting house exteriors, so I was ready then for a nice hot lunch, and my boss sprung for it, too. Sweet! It was packed that day. Maybe it still gets packed for lunch?

The Saturday night we went it was not. They actually made us wait for a table, though we called ahead for a party of 8. The drinks came quick enough, but that's where the service stopped being exactly that... Service. It took twenty minutes for a sausage and burnt end appetizer. I would consider a smoked meat a pre-prepared option, so it was hard to imagine what took so long to re-heat them. They were good once we got them. The sausage wasn't as spiced as I prefer, but it was good. The burnt ends were equally charred and moist, so they fell apart nicely when masticated. (You can deposit my $0.50 to my PayPal account.) We also ordered wings which were nicely breaded and cooked well, but served without sauce. I got the rib platter because I had the other meats as an appetizer. The ribs were cooked pretty well, but they were not very hot, which confused me even more as to why it took another 25 minutes to get them. At this point we were already talking about limiting the tip. As far as the meat goes; it came off the bone easily, but it left an odd scent as I exhaled with it in my mouth. I used to get overcooked pork chops from my dad that had this "quality".

The sauce was lightly sweet and it was nice and thick, so they have THAT going for them. I'm not a huge fan of the sweetness on which some restaurants base their sauce, so the light sweetness was a welcome difference.

I'm not going out of my way to go here again. I would accept an invitation from friends, if that was their choice for dinner, to allow for a little redemption. There just wasn't enough stand alone goodness to choose this place over, say, the Jackstack another ten minutes down the street.