Looking for BBQ in Royal Oak and Oakland County

About.com Rating

Lockhart's BBQ features smoked meat of just about every description. While the restaurant offers sandwiches and comfort foods, its main claim to fame is its half-pound plate of meat served with two sides. While the restaurant has a nice atmosphere, good service and does a lot right in terms of menu and BBQ, not all of its dishes impress.

Location

Lockhart's BBQ is located off by itself amid a sea of parking lots.

That's because it is actually located behind the storefronts of Royal Oak's Main Street. Even so, the restaurant occupies a historic brick building that gives the restaurant some character, as well as a large, cavernous dining area with lofty ceiling space and room for plenty of wooden tables and chairs.

In the summer months, the restaurant has a small patio / beer garden off to the south side of the building. Unlike the restaurants along Main Street, however, the patio isn't about dining amid the hustle and bustle of a busy downtown street. It is instead surrounded by a large, wooden slat fence that, while allowing air flow, echoes back diner noise and makes the view somewhat irrelevant. The location of the patio in relation to the building and the many umbrellas of its tables keep the area mostly shaded at lunchtime.

As the name of the restaurant implies, Lockhart's is all about barbecue, which, in this case, means a variety of meats smoked with White Oak and Hickory woods. In addition to The Whole Hog, which is a Smoked Suckling Pig served table side, the restaurant offers a half-pound plate of your meat of choice: brisket, pulled pork, ribs, sausage, ham, chicken or turkey.

The plate-o-meat also includes white bread and your choice of two sides. The side options available number 18 and include Deviled Eggs, Jalopeno Brown Beans, Four Cheese Mac-n-Cheese, Corn Bowl, and Collard Greens. Lockhart's also gives you plenty of choice when it comes to BBQ sauce. You can choose to forego sauce completely or sample the four different varieties kept table side: Lockhart's Signature, Sweet, Fire on the Red and Carolina Gold.

The menu also includes a few salads, a host of sandwiches, Texas Chili and Ugly Smoked Gumbo, as well as "Comfort" food like Catfish, Four Cheese Mac'n'Cheese Shepherd's Pie and Smoked Port Street Tacos.

Food

The Burnt Ends on the Starters menu is billed as "double rubbed and double smoked" brisket bits. The dish as presented included 16 cubes of brisket covered in dark, slightly burnt BBQ sauce and served on a lined platter. While the restaurant's Signature Sauce is tasty, the brisket cubes were either fatty in places or hard and dry with no tasty caramelized bits.That being said, the fatty bits, while off putting if examined too closely, melted in your mouth and were pretty tasty.

The BBQ Chicken Sandwich was solely made up of thinly sliced, tender chicken breast. The fairly large slices were generously rubbed with spices and highly stacked. The bun nicely complimented the chicken in terms of size and thickness, although toasting would have been nice. While Lockhart's Signature Sauce was too much with the rub, the Sweet Sauce complimented it nicely and the honey that accompanied the cornbread made the sandwich memorable.

The cornbread side was about the size of a thick deck of cards and served with both butter and honey. The cornbread was very sweet, so the butter made the better spread.