South Winchester Barbeque
1362 S. Winchester Blvd
San Jose, CA 95128
408-376-0485
www.swinchesterbbq.com
https://www.facebook.com/southwinchesterbbq
The folks that own Trail Dust Barbeque in Morgan Hill have opened up a new joint in San Jose called South Winchester Barbeque. If you're familiar with Trail Dust, the menu at South Winchester will look familiar...tri-tip, chicken, pulled pork, St. Louis-style ribs, and hot links served as sandwiches or meals, with cole slaw, potato salad, beans, chips, grilled bread, and garlic bread on the side and a selection of desserts. However, the biggest menu improvement here in San Jose is the addition of BRISKET, something sorely lacking at the Morgan Hill location.
All the meats are smoked in a Yoder trailer-mounted pit in the parking lot behind the restaurant. A big stack of split red oak logs tells you that everything is smoked over a real wood fire here.
There's also a big selection of beer and hard to find craft ales, some on tap and some in bottles. The large front patio with a lonely cornhole game was empty during our February weekday lunch visit, but one can see the potential for the space as a beer garden on warm summer evenings with live music and people hanging out drinking craft beer and snacking on pork sliders.
We ordered a selection of items from the menu: a regular brisket sandwich ($10; also available in large size), a pulled pork slider ($4.50), and a St. Louis-style 4-rib meal ($14; also available in 1/2 rack and full rack). The sandwich came on a choice of grilled bread or garlic bread and included one side; the ribs included beans, bread, and choice of potato salad or cole slaw.
The brisket was tender, a little too smoky for my taste, and the outside meat was a bit dry, but the flavor of the beef came through and I appreciated that the meat was served plain on bread without sauce so you could add it to your liking. South Winchester is using ciabatta bread for the sandwiches, just like Trail Dust. It makes for a sturdy meat holder, but I'd prefer a softer bun of some kind. I chose the garlic bread, which threw me for a loop when I bit into it because that garlic flavor is something I associate with a tri-tip sandwich, not a brisket sandwich...next time I'll choose regular grilled bread.
The pork slider looked like 1/3 of a regular sandwich, the meat sauced with a vinegar-molasses "hog wash". Lots of flavor, but mostly from the sauce which overwhelmed the pork. Next time I'd ask for light sauce or sauce on the side.
The St. Louis-style ribs were quite good, nice and tender, in a happy place between "KCBS clean bite" and typical "fall-off-the-bone" restaurant doneness. The four bones were individually sliced and sauced, with maybe a bit too much sauce for my wife, but just right for me.
House sauces include a sweet regular sauce and a very spicy version that smacks you in the face, grabs your taste buds, and doesn't let go for a while. Too spicy for me, I just went with the regular sauce on my brisket sammie and enjoyed it a lot.
They were out of cole slaw during our visit, so beans and potato salad were tried. The beans were in a thin liquid with a pronounced chili powder flavor; my wife loved them, me not so much. The potato salad was really good, with big chunks of potato in a very tight mixture. It seemed homemade, not your typical food service tater salad used by so many joints.
No french fries here (one of my favorite sides with barbecue), but a good brand of kettle chip is available if you want something crunchy with your meal. Well, there's also a selection of salads on the menu, so I guess those qualify as crunchy, too.
The kid's menu features a pint-sized version of a barbecue plate, a grilled cheese sammie, and a hot dog. Desserts are berry cobbler with vanilla ice cream and fresh blackberry topping, homemade bread pudding with rum sauce, and root beer float.
All barbecued meats are available by the pound. They also offer barbecue to-go packs that feed as few as two and as many as 100 people!
This is the kind of place where you order at the counter and they bring the food to your table. Friendly service on the day we visited, order was accurately taken and delivered, and the guy taking orders at the register was knowledgeable about both the barbecue and the beers offered.
Meal as described above with 1 beer ($7), 1 soft drink ($3), and 1 bag of chips ($3) plus tax was $45. A bit pricey, but overall a nice experience.
Here are some photos...please enjoy!
Continued...
1362 S. Winchester Blvd
San Jose, CA 95128
408-376-0485
www.swinchesterbbq.com
https://www.facebook.com/southwinchesterbbq
The folks that own Trail Dust Barbeque in Morgan Hill have opened up a new joint in San Jose called South Winchester Barbeque. If you're familiar with Trail Dust, the menu at South Winchester will look familiar...tri-tip, chicken, pulled pork, St. Louis-style ribs, and hot links served as sandwiches or meals, with cole slaw, potato salad, beans, chips, grilled bread, and garlic bread on the side and a selection of desserts. However, the biggest menu improvement here in San Jose is the addition of BRISKET, something sorely lacking at the Morgan Hill location.
All the meats are smoked in a Yoder trailer-mounted pit in the parking lot behind the restaurant. A big stack of split red oak logs tells you that everything is smoked over a real wood fire here.
There's also a big selection of beer and hard to find craft ales, some on tap and some in bottles. The large front patio with a lonely cornhole game was empty during our February weekday lunch visit, but one can see the potential for the space as a beer garden on warm summer evenings with live music and people hanging out drinking craft beer and snacking on pork sliders.
We ordered a selection of items from the menu: a regular brisket sandwich ($10; also available in large size), a pulled pork slider ($4.50), and a St. Louis-style 4-rib meal ($14; also available in 1/2 rack and full rack). The sandwich came on a choice of grilled bread or garlic bread and included one side; the ribs included beans, bread, and choice of potato salad or cole slaw.
The brisket was tender, a little too smoky for my taste, and the outside meat was a bit dry, but the flavor of the beef came through and I appreciated that the meat was served plain on bread without sauce so you could add it to your liking. South Winchester is using ciabatta bread for the sandwiches, just like Trail Dust. It makes for a sturdy meat holder, but I'd prefer a softer bun of some kind. I chose the garlic bread, which threw me for a loop when I bit into it because that garlic flavor is something I associate with a tri-tip sandwich, not a brisket sandwich...next time I'll choose regular grilled bread.
The pork slider looked like 1/3 of a regular sandwich, the meat sauced with a vinegar-molasses "hog wash". Lots of flavor, but mostly from the sauce which overwhelmed the pork. Next time I'd ask for light sauce or sauce on the side.
The St. Louis-style ribs were quite good, nice and tender, in a happy place between "KCBS clean bite" and typical "fall-off-the-bone" restaurant doneness. The four bones were individually sliced and sauced, with maybe a bit too much sauce for my wife, but just right for me.
House sauces include a sweet regular sauce and a very spicy version that smacks you in the face, grabs your taste buds, and doesn't let go for a while. Too spicy for me, I just went with the regular sauce on my brisket sammie and enjoyed it a lot.
They were out of cole slaw during our visit, so beans and potato salad were tried. The beans were in a thin liquid with a pronounced chili powder flavor; my wife loved them, me not so much. The potato salad was really good, with big chunks of potato in a very tight mixture. It seemed homemade, not your typical food service tater salad used by so many joints.
No french fries here (one of my favorite sides with barbecue), but a good brand of kettle chip is available if you want something crunchy with your meal. Well, there's also a selection of salads on the menu, so I guess those qualify as crunchy, too.
The kid's menu features a pint-sized version of a barbecue plate, a grilled cheese sammie, and a hot dog. Desserts are berry cobbler with vanilla ice cream and fresh blackberry topping, homemade bread pudding with rum sauce, and root beer float.
All barbecued meats are available by the pound. They also offer barbecue to-go packs that feed as few as two and as many as 100 people!
This is the kind of place where you order at the counter and they bring the food to your table. Friendly service on the day we visited, order was accurately taken and delivered, and the guy taking orders at the register was knowledgeable about both the barbecue and the beers offered.
Meal as described above with 1 beer ($7), 1 soft drink ($3), and 1 bag of chips ($3) plus tax was $45. A bit pricey, but overall a nice experience.
Here are some photos...please enjoy!
Continued...
