More BBQ

The Silver St. BBQ in Lebanon is the newest addition to the BBQ scene in Warren County. There can never be enough BBQ and Lebanon is lacking in any restaurant offerings. With these two thoughts in mind I have anticipated this restaurants opening since it was first rumored to be opening.

There are many pluses to this new restaurant. The open kitchen concept lets the customer see the care put into the food, unfortunately for Silver St. it also lets the customer see that the kitchen staff is woefully unprepared to handle a crowded dining room.

The dining area is well put together and large. Everything was clean and a place where you would be happy to bring your family(suprisingly this is unique for Warren County BBQ).

The menu is reasonable with burgers, chicken, pulled pork, brisket and ribs. There are all of the the expected sides beans, coleslaw, mac and cheese and cobbler.

The food quality was good, but nothing to write home about. The brisket and pulled pork are clearly done in-house and had good flavor, but lacked that finger licking good quality their Landen competitor offers. All of the sauces were good and brought more flavor to the meats.

The sides that we had were average. The mac and cheese and cobbler both cost extra, and are not worth the charge. The baked beans were good and loaded with pork, hard to go wrong.

I think the largest problems stem from being a newly opened restaurant, but for many of us you only get one shot and unfortunately Silver St. did not take advantage of their one shot with many customers.

The restaurant was busy, but not packed. The wait staff and kitchen were clearly not prepared. We waited nearly 50 minutes to get our food. I am all about eating slower, but when you are catering to a lunch crowd this is unacceptable. The blame could be spread around, our waitress was sweet but inattentive. The kitchen was overwhelmed with only two guys that clearly couldn't keep up. In addition there were menu items that were unavailable, notably iced tea. I have made iced tea a million times and it takes all of 2 minutes, the lack of staff prevented them from keeping their standards up.

I am happy that Lebanon has a new restaurant, and I wish them the best, but they must improve their service and serving time to succeed. Their quality cannot compete with Landen, but if they can improve in other areas they might have a chance of sticking around.