One day last weekend, my wife and I decided to try the Iron Barley. I have seen many good reviews and after a spot on the Food Network show "Diners, Drive-ins and Dives", I thought it would be fun to check out for myself. It is located on Virgina Avenue, in South City. It was actually not too far from the River City Casino or even Temptor Salon, where I was getting my haircut.
It is a nice place with a bar set-up, open kitchen, and wood everywhere. It has a lot of tables that seat between two and 4 people and while we came in at about 12:30, afternoon. This meant that the large group of 8 people who saw the "Seat Yourself " sign near the entrance, had to stand there, like a gorilla in the room, until someone came up to them and asked to help them. I saw this group of 8 people stand near the entrance door for 15 minutes before someone came by to help them. If I was with them, I would have walked out and left. Well, besides that bit of fun, everything we had was fairly good.
The bar area has just about every possible thing you can find, under the sun, behind the bar. We were greeted after a while and then ordered our food. My wife got the pulled pork sandwich with the past salad and slaw, which was the special. I ordered a sandwich called the Ballistic Elvis, but without the cheese. What it was, was a pan fried peanut butter and strawberry jelly sandwich, with some bacon, banana and red pepper flakes. It came with a bag of Ruffles. It was a good sandwich, but I had only one small, minor needed change: the red pepper flakes needed to be more spread out.
The sandwich tasted like there was no spice in it at all, until I was left with but a quarter of it. Then, every bite was hot and spicy. It just looked as if the pepper flakes were sprinkled in, with a heavy hand at the end of the sprinkling, so it was very spicy at one point but not others. Id give the sandwich a 3 out of 5, which means that I like it, but next time I would try to order something different.
I'd probably order what my wife had, if it was there again. She got a BBQ pulled pork sandwich with some slaw and some pasta salad. What a good test we had as when the plate was delivered to us, the pasta salad was about 3 pieces of pasta mixed in with some eggplant. This really isn't a salad and on top of that, there was no mention of eggplant being anywhere or from anyone. My wife is allergic to eggplant. So, like all good restaurants, when we told them of her allergy, they quickly got us a new plate, put the sandwich on it and gave her two scoops of the slaw instead of just one.
The slaw was good. The bun was toasted and stood up well. The large heap of BBQ pork was very, melt in your mouth tender. The sauce though, was very sweet and tangy, like it was a mix of the vinegar based sauces and the ketchup based sauces at once. I'd give this special sandwich a 4 out of 5, meaning that everything was done right and I'd order it again.
The server was very good at recovering after the eggplant issue and the only problem we had was timing. We told the server that we were in a hurry and thought that 30 minutes was enough time to order some food, while we sat 4 feet from the kitchen. It seemed that even though we had put in our order when there were only 4 orders in front of us, the 2 cooks still took almost 20 minutes to get our food to us. The restaurant wasn't very full, maybe only 1/3rd of the way full. So, it may have just been a timing issue, but it seems that you shouldn't go there unless you have more than 30 minutes to eat.
It is a nice place with a bar set-up, open kitchen, and wood everywhere. It has a lot of tables that seat between two and 4 people and while we came in at about 12:30, afternoon. This meant that the large group of 8 people who saw the "Seat Yourself " sign near the entrance, had to stand there, like a gorilla in the room, until someone came up to them and asked to help them. I saw this group of 8 people stand near the entrance door for 15 minutes before someone came by to help them. If I was with them, I would have walked out and left. Well, besides that bit of fun, everything we had was fairly good.
The bar area has just about every possible thing you can find, under the sun, behind the bar. We were greeted after a while and then ordered our food. My wife got the pulled pork sandwich with the past salad and slaw, which was the special. I ordered a sandwich called the Ballistic Elvis, but without the cheese. What it was, was a pan fried peanut butter and strawberry jelly sandwich, with some bacon, banana and red pepper flakes. It came with a bag of Ruffles. It was a good sandwich, but I had only one small, minor needed change: the red pepper flakes needed to be more spread out.
The sandwich tasted like there was no spice in it at all, until I was left with but a quarter of it. Then, every bite was hot and spicy. It just looked as if the pepper flakes were sprinkled in, with a heavy hand at the end of the sprinkling, so it was very spicy at one point but not others. Id give the sandwich a 3 out of 5, which means that I like it, but next time I would try to order something different.
I'd probably order what my wife had, if it was there again. She got a BBQ pulled pork sandwich with some slaw and some pasta salad. What a good test we had as when the plate was delivered to us, the pasta salad was about 3 pieces of pasta mixed in with some eggplant. This really isn't a salad and on top of that, there was no mention of eggplant being anywhere or from anyone. My wife is allergic to eggplant. So, like all good restaurants, when we told them of her allergy, they quickly got us a new plate, put the sandwich on it and gave her two scoops of the slaw instead of just one.
The server was very good at recovering after the eggplant issue and the only problem we had was timing. We told the server that we were in a hurry and thought that 30 minutes was enough time to order some food, while we sat 4 feet from the kitchen. It seemed that even though we had put in our order when there were only 4 orders in front of us, the 2 cooks still took almost 20 minutes to get our food to us. The restaurant wasn't very full, maybe only 1/3rd of the way full. So, it may have just been a timing issue, but it seems that you shouldn't go there unless you have more than 30 minutes to eat.
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