Review: Williamson Bros. Bar-B-Q

Do you ever get a “barbeque tooth?” That’s like a sweet tooth for baby back pork ribs. Or, have you ever been somewhere either walking or driving and you pick up the scent of something being roasted over a wood fire? You know, it’s a primal memory when your mind begins to conjure up images of juicy, tender, sauce-laden, succulent pieces of meat.

No matter how hard you may try to resist, you can’t help it—it’s time to pull into the parking lot of . It happened just the other day when the weather was perfect, and I left my car windows down to enjoy the fresh air. One whiff and I was a goner.

So there I was sitting under the big moose and asking the server a bunch of questions about the menu. She talked me into the Chicken Breast BBQ special with a choice of one side dish for $6.99—this comes served with the sweet sauce. With that, I ordered a tall, frosty glass of iced tea ($2.49). Please don’t get me wrong, the chicken was great. It was a heaping pile of tender, white breast meat sitting there in lovely communion with the barbeque sauce (you know how I am about sauces)—but it just didn’t satisfy my barbeque-tooth.

Halfway through my meal, I beckoned the server over and ordered a small order of BBQ ribs ($6.99). It was a culinary imperative, ah, you know, for research. The ribs? Perfect in every way—tender, juicy, meaty and satisfying.

A Sucker for Sauce

I love a good story about entrepreneurship and pluck like the origins of the Williamson Brothers’ restaurant. But none pleases me more than the horizontal expansion of a product line, an offshoot of their talent for barbequing meat—their sauces. In order for you to enjoy ribs and the other meats, according to your personal preferences, these smart guys offer you several choices to enjoy while dining in and, to extend the experience, some to take home: Original, Pepper, Hot Sauce, one just named “Spices”, Steak, Carolina, Garlic, Chipotle and Honey BBQ. The take-home bottles are priced at $4.99 for 16 oz., and you can get a gallon of the original for $12.99.

The menu includes traditional southern staples such as fried green tomatoes, fried okra and one of my favorites—corn fritters. There is one fish dish, a Salmon Platter ($14.99) in this mostly meat eater’s paradise; something to keep in mind for your pescatarian (eating fish only) dinner buddies.

Overall, the service is warm, friendly and willing to make every accommodation to enhance your dining pleasure. The ambience is rustic and “down home” in a wonderful way.

The Williamson Brothers restaurant in Marietta started back in the ’90s and now includes the Canton location and one in Douglasville. I don’t really know, but I bet that one of the secrets to their long-running success, aside from satisfying mans’ primal enjoyment of meat cooked over a burning fire, is the sauce.