2025 Alabama BBQ Tour: Houston County - BBQ King, LLC, Dothan, Alabama

 

Life has gotten in the way of our BBQ Trail adventures the past couple of months.  Last week we had a great time on the Gulf Coast and on the way home (through Dothan), we decided to take the opportunity to dine on BBQ in this part of our state.

We've enjoyed BBQ in big restaurants, small restaurants, award winning spots, and several in between.  But BBQ King in Dothan would be classified in my estimation as a "BBQ Joint" and I mean that in the most respectful way.  

This was a very informal setting with a menu board by the front door.  As we entered a young lady told us to review the board, sit where we wanted, and she'd be over in a bit to take our order.  We each took a picture of the menu board so we could look it over and make our selections.

We each ordered sweet tea and were pleased with the appropriate amount of sweetness.  

Sweet Harold wanted to try all the meats, so he ordered the "Trio" which includes ribs, chicken, AND pulled pork.  Slaw and baked beans were his side dishes.

We'll start with the ribs:  large, meaty, smoky, with a nice outer bark.  The ribs were well cooked and passed the KCBS taste test in that when taking a bite, only ONE bite was removed from the bone and the bone dried immediately.  

The chicken portion of the Trio consisted of a thigh and drumstick.  The chicken was juicy and had a distinct smoke flavor.

The pork was tender and moist.  No discernable smoke flavor, dry rub seasoning, or exterior bark.

The baked beans were well seasoned and had ground beef added to the mix.  He enjoyed these.

Another pleasant surprise was the coleslaw.  If Sweet Harold knows anything, it's coleslaw.  It was a nice mix of green and purple cabbage and the dressing had a nice ratio to the cabbage.

My turn!  I ordered the pulled pork plate with macaroni and cheese and fried okra.  Both of our meals came with a slice of white bread.

As you can see, this was an extremely generous portion of pulled pork.  Sadly, my serving was the same as SH's.  While the meat was delicious, it didn't have any smoke flavor, dry rub, or exterior bark mixed in with the inside meat.  However, I did find two pieces of bone with my serving.  Fortunately, the pieces were large enough for me to see before biting into them.  If you look closely at the bottom of the picture below, you can spy one of the pieces of bone.

Now to the macaroni and cheese.  I had high hopes when I ordered.  This version was baked and had a nice flavor, but was served at a more room temperature state instead of being piping hot from the oven.  It could have used a lot more cheese to have that "cheese pull" that we all love!

The okra (while possibly frozen and cooked) was my favorite on this plate.  It had that "fried in a cast iron skillet" texture instead of being dumped into a deep fryer to cook.  If that's how this was cooked, they did an excellent job in getting the texture near perfection.

There were two homemade BBQ sauces to choose from.  We liked both of them!  Of course, I will always tend to favor the vinegar or mustard based sauces because I feel that they pair best with pork.

The other was a tomato based sauce with a light smoky flavor.

Service was efficient and we received our food in a timely manner.  The owner came through the dining room and stopped at each table to inquire about any issues anyone was experiencing.  

I did enjoy seeing their very impressive smoker next to the building!

Standouts:  Smoked chicken and ribs, baked beans, slaw, okra, and homemade sauces.

Point Takeaways:  Styrofoam plates and cups, bland pork, bones in the pork.

Our Score:  91