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Usually I don’t do reviews on restaurants I go to here. I try to keep it about music, quilting and some basic pop culture. But sometimes you just have to warn people.

I am not a fast food person. I can’t remember the last meal I had at McDonalds or one of the other in the long line of overly manufactured food establishments. I find the smell unpleasant and the food usually too sweet or salty. I have the same problem at most chain restaurants.

With that said, I am also married to someone that makes amazing BBQ and continually strives to improve. The Memorial Day weekend started with him smoking 2 pork shoulders for 13 hours and making 2 of his own BBQ sauces - a tomato based and a mustard based. All natural ingredients used. Great stuff.

And onto the story…

Last year on our way to PJs BBQ in Saratoga Springs, we saw a sign on the Northway for Giffy’s BBQ in Clifton Park. We made a note of it and planned to visit when we hit the area again. Then it was mentioned on the local Albany News station as having been a finalist in the Regis and Kelly Hometown Cook off. We figured we should make the trip before the Regis and Kelly fans made their possible pilgrimage. We were heading to the Albany area anyway.

The place is cute. Very country, gingham curtains, wood tables like you would find in your grandmother’s breakfast nook. Our waiter was polite, quick, and genuinely a nice guy that was earning money for his next year of college. And that is where the good stuff ends.

We decided to go with a sampler platter. It had 2 chicken legs, a small pulled pork sandwich, a small pulled beef sandwich, and 4 sides. We also ordered a small rack of ribs and some hot chicken wings.

The chicken legs were scrawny and unspiced. They were also the ONLY thing not slathered in the most horrendous sauce of high fructose corn syrup, red food dye and liquid smoke. There was no flavor other than sweet. And EVERYTHING else (except the chicken wings) were smothered in this crap. It was hard to tell the beef from the pork. They were both the same color and the consistency of mush. The ribs were also covered in this sauce to the point of not being able to tell where they were seperated. The sandwiches came on white buns - usually not an issue- but these were like mini sponges. They soaked up a great deal of the sauce, but not enough. We did not eat the bread as it was red and mushy about 3 minutes after hitting the table.

We ordered our wings HOT. Lets just say that a bit of Frank’s hot sauce does not a hot wing make. I can only imagine how lifeless the mild wings were.

We also got 4 sides. Baked Beans (mushy and way too sweet), Cole Slaw (tasted like it was from a plastic tub they got at WalMart or some other industrial service), Potato salad (I’ve had better and, this will be a surprise, they were mushy), and collard greens and green beans. I think the collard greens had been sitting around for a very long time. They were lifeless and flavorless.

We were told we were ordering a lot of food. It really wasn’t that much for 2 people. And we were glad it wasn’t as much as the waiter made us think it would be.

The sugar high ended about an hour later in the middle of a large home Improvement store. It was tragic. Two adults feeling as though they had been beaten with a stick, stomachs full of lead, head full of regret. With more shopping left to do.

If you like your meal masquerading as BBQ, but actually just a glop of overly sweet redness with some meat in it, then this is the place for you. If you care about your taste buds, digestive system and BBQ, go to PJ’s in Saratoga or Holy Smoke in Mahopec. Both worth the drive. And you may feel full, but you won’t feel nauseous.

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