Willie’s Brew & Que

Was told to come back and try Willie’s again because it was under new management. Well, unfortunately that didn’t do any good. I wanted to place a take out order the other day and there was no hostess at the door so I proceeded to the pickup area in the back and perused the menu and waited for anyone to acknowledge my presence so I could place an order… no dice. After waiting 10 minutes with nobody, not a server, cook or anyone even notice I was there and waiting to place an order, I left. I won’t be back.

Do not, under any circumstances, order the brisket. The brisket was drenched in BBQ sauce which gave it a texture more like pulled pork.
Fortunately, there’s a good beer selection and many TVs. It’s fine as a sports bar.

Went here with a big group and they were very accomodating. The stars are mostly for the manager who took our reservation because she was really nice but I also give credit to the place for the taste of the food (brussel sprouts were cooked well), many large TVs, and beer selection.
Overall, however, this place is not good. 1) The service was horrendous — our waiter was slow to do everything and rarely checked on us. Our time there took much longer than it should have. The mac and cheese arrived cold as well. 2) They were out of everything and it was 7 p.m. on a Saturday — baby back ribs, pulled pork, and Chesapeake dip. 3) The place looked messy, there were boxes everywhere, an employee locker in plain view. 4) The cocktails were terrible — whatever mixes they use are are loaded with sugar they definitely don’t use fresh ingredients.

The food is fine, if not a little overpriced for what you get. My biggest complaint would be that every time I’ve come here it’s taken forever to get my food. Clearly the pulled pork can’t be made to order so I’m not sure what’s taking so long. If you have time and are in the navy yard this is the only BBQ around.

More meat please. For $ 12.00 I got a brisket sandwich that had 2 slices of meat on it, a small dollop (3 bites) of cole slaw as a side and home made chips. Although the food is tasty, you leave hungry and poorer for the price. This was my second visit.

I’m a big fan of this place. I’ve only been here for dinner, but it’s been great each time, and reasonably priced.
Pros:
So far we’ve had an excellent brisket, pulled pork sandwiches (or as an entrée), and even the bone-​in BBQ chicken has been a hit. The sausage was quite good, but perhaps a bit small. Their homemade chips are outstanding, and the sides I’ve had have all been great (I particularly like the coleslaw). Find yourself time to order the chips and pimento cheese dip, it’s just fantastic. For kids, the grilled cheese with the homemade chips has always been met with approval.
Cons:
The main negative I have is that it seems «Willie’s Lager» (someone on Untappd says it’s just Narragansett Lager) often isn’t in stock. They’ve been out 50% of our visits. That’s PROBABLY not a problem for most people, because it’s pretty light, and I know hops are all the rage now. But I’m a hop wimp, and prefer a lighter beer. It was in stock for my last visit, so that’s a plus.
Someone with us once got the nachos, and she mentioned that the chips seemed a little mass-​produced, so she wasn’t impressed on that front. They didn’t look like the photo that’s on Unilocal,so maybe it was just off that night. Oh, and at one point they had a fair amount of bottles of BBQ sauce on the various tables, but they seem to be replaced with single serving little cups brought to your table now. Maybe not as satisfying, but really not a huge deal. Just strange.
Anyway, I suspect this place will be CRAZY during baseball season, but right now, as we go more and more in the winter, it’s definitely «in the rotation.» Holy frak, I just made a baseball pun and didn’t mean to. I love baseball, but hate myself for that. This is definitely worth a visit for good food and cold beer.

Willie’s is near my office, so I try to come in from time to time for a change of pace. I am a huge fan of their lunch combinations which are either a sandwich with coleslaw, chips and a drink for $ 10 (the Chesapeake dip or cheeseburger are $ 12) or the big a$$ salad with a drink (salad topped with bbq pork or chicken).
If I order the salad, I usually do a $ 5 order of chips with cheese dip. I don’t know why but the cheese dip is always amazing.
Since it is sit down, it will take a little while longer than some of the other spots around it, but it is worth it. The staff is funny, and service is friendly and quick. The bartenders are also great at pouring all sorts of drinks.

This review is for lunch only
Service: stood at the hostess stand for 10 minutes before I had to ask someone for help. Once seated, we never had a designated server in the patio area. Food came out before our beverages… I was so thirsty.
Food: very tasty, the portions are not that big, but good. The que chicken, kale, were wonderful. The baked beans were ok. My friend had the ribs and mac and cheese. The ribs are very good. Mac ok.
If the service was better the food would taste better… well that’s my thought

This is a beautiful, large facility that’s mostly empty when I walk by. Same goes for a lot of businesses in the area that seem to have sprung up in anticipation of all the swanky apartment projects nearby. I’ve only gotten the wings here, which are smoky and good. The rest of the menu looks somewhat overpriced. The staff look underworked and bored. Here’s hoping business picks up eventually.

1 star is nice.
Hubs and friend ordered pulled pork. I ordered chicken nachos. Chicken. Food comes, no chicken on the nachos and all of our food is stone cold. Weekend we tell or server she tries to do this cutsey baby voice «oops i forgot to put the chicken in the computer.» and walks away. So she didn’t even address the cold food and didn’t offer to bring chicken or correct the order.
Everything was terribly overpriced.

I really wanted to like this place. There is one thing I love to eat and that’s BBQ.
What I have to say is more about food sanitation, and I suggest more people take note next time they eat. Luckily, my meal was made by the employee wearing gloves and not the employee that just got done using personal phone and began to prep a salad without gloves. Not to mention reaching hand inside chips basket and sneaking a bite. Not to mention move what appeared to be a trash can out the way, and back to prep.
First off, I ordered the pulled pork lunch special. Overall, the sandwich was not memorable, nor was it bad. Again my problem is the sanitation.
Without going into to much more details, please watch behind the counter on how the employees make food. You will see from my pic, I’m a chef, and I know exactly what’s right from wrong.

Full disclosure — the only thing I have had here was a $ 20 pitcher of Fat Tire after a Nationals game on a Sunday afternoon.
I will say that despite the place being nearly empty (makes me wonder about the food) we were led to the worst table — we asked to move and they obliged — and they definitely seemed put off that we were only having beer.
Still, though…$ 20 pitcher of Fat Tire = 4 stars.

Pre game meal turned out to be consistent with what Unilocal had this place rated at. It seems like the emphasis is on the pregame atmosphere more so than the quality of what you get. To start, the service was great. The host/​hostess team was cool, the waittress was awesome too, and even helped us work through a situation we had. But when you get down to it, the star of any resturant should be the food, not the people and the TVs.
There was a bunch of things I would have loved to have tried, but I only had one shot. We decided to split the pulled pork nachos (which when done right is one of the best baseball foods ever), I got the pulled pork sandwich with chips (little redundant I know).
The nachos with pulled pork was a heap of what looked like they could have been homemade chips, with bit of nacho cheese, and pulled pork, some jalapeño peppers weren’t bad. There wasn’t any sauce on the pulled bbq (i like for the sweet contrast vs the spice of peppers), and my biggest complaint was that the jalapeño peppers weren’t cooked. I think that was a pretty big missed opportunity.
The pulled bbq sandwich was good, it was dry, so I got to try a few of their signature sauces. The molasses sauce was very sweet (obv), the mustard sauce wasn’t bad, but their Carolina style was pretty good. I thought that went best with the pulled pork. Chips were decent. Pricy meal, but less than 5 blocks from the baseball park, it is what you would expect it to be.

O-​H M-​Y G-​O-​D! Avoid their brisket by all means.
I live in the area and am a regular Hill Country BBQ go-​er. I was craving for some moist brisket but didn’t want to drive to downtown. (Looks like I will continue to have to drive to downtown for some good brisket.)
I ordered a meal: Sliced Brisket with 2 sides.
When the server brought my food, I knew it wasn’t going to be good by the look of it. Yes it’s unfortunately true (there is a saying in my Korean culture) that «people eat their foods by their eyes» meaning if the food looks good, it tastes good.
The brisket was drenched in some type of sauce. Normally these type of BBQ are just cooked in smoke with herbs and/​or seasoning. But I could taste none of these and felt my tongue just got saturated by salt in ONE bite. Since I work in the restaurant business, I never like to make a fuss about my food but this time I had to. I called my server and said «I don’t want to be a pain but» then she knew what I was going to say and said «they are dry, isn’t it?» as if it frequently happens here.
They were nice enough to change my brisket with no sauce but it was still very dry. That’s obvious, it all comes from the same chunk of brisket.
Anyway I feel I just wasted my 20bucks.

2 stars instead of 1 only because nothing AWFUL happened either of the two times I’ve been there. But the bottom line is their food is not good and their beer selection (along the lines of Yuengling and Budweiser Black Crown) couldn’t be worse so… why go? They have a very prime piece of real estate right next to DOT and the Waterfront. If they’d put the time and effort into a more creative and better executed menu (both «brew and ‘que»), I’m sure they could earn back in triplicate the money spent.
Why not offer food other than mediocre BBQ? Why not try to appeal at all to the health-​conscious eaters of DC? Why not have a more interesting beer selection? Shoot, why not add a shuffleboard table or some dart boards or stock some board games? Something, ANYthing, to entice would-​be customers.
The space is remarkable and the service is nothing to complain about but obviously those things alone don’t make a restaurant worth patronizing. With so many other, more inspired places to eat around that area, Willie’s gives you no reason to choose them over their competition. Except maybe that it’ll be the only place empty enough to be able to seat your last-​minute-​lunch-​with-​co-​workers. Sounds harsh but it’s true!

Not going to lie I was pretty let-​down by my visit here. We stopped by once before for drinks and couldn’t wait to visit again and try the food. I ordered the ribs, macaroni, and corn bread. The ribs were extremely dry and tough. Nothing tender about the half-​rack I received. Maybe the baby back ribs are better but not sure I’d trust ribs from here again…
The macaroni and corn bread were pretty good. Not so good that they saved the meal but good in their own right. Would definitely visit this place before/​after Nats games and other events for drinks. Has a nice vibe and plenty of TVs by the bar. Decent amount of outside seating as well.

Intended to grab lunch with coworkers at Nando’s and Willie’s BBQ smelled so great that we stopped there instead. They have a great outdoor area, with big umbrellas, and I definitely want to head back for a HH– they were advertising $ 5 drinks and $ 20 pitchers.
During the workweek, they run a $ 10 lunch special. BBQ sandwich of your choice, with their homemade seasoned chips, drink, and side of coleslaw. Their «side» really means «bite.» They bring it out in one of those to-​go ketchup or mustard containers, which is a shame since their coleslaw is AWESOME. The sandwich was good, but lacking sauce and it’s really just bread with BBQ’d meat– nothing else on it. Chips were awesome. Still a pretty good deal for $ 10. I’d give my food a 3.5 out of 5. My two coworkers got the platters, which seemed much better, for a slightly higher price. The BBQ brisket, with mac & cheese, and kale looked, and smelled, amazing.
The 2 stars, unfortunately, is for service. The restaurant wasn’t too crowded. I’d say out of the 12 – 15 tables outside, and an additional 15 – 20 inside, a little less than half were filled. I saw about 6 servers/​food runners on the floor, and it was still the SLOWEST, most forgetful, albeit friendly, service. Literally, one water was being brought out a time. Some of the drinks were incorrect and we took them just because it was taking so long to get anything out from the kitchen. The food came out in waves, so some of us were nearly finished by the time others received their lunches.
The one, really convenient aspect was that they automatically do separate checks at lunch, which is really nice when you’re out with coworkers. Overall, seems like it could be great, but is super disorganized.

BOTTOM LINE: Pricey Q and the food is «Meh!»…nothing spectacular.
I am so bummed because I really wanted to like this place. I had my mind fixated on BBQ all day… so I wanted it to be so good but the food was somewhat disappointing. Also, half of the «good BBQ» menu items that I wanted to order were unavailable… i.e. The Baby Back Ribs, Handmade Smoke Sausages, etc. …You know… All the good stuff that’s bad for you. Thanks for letting us know after we already sat down, ordered drinks, and started on the appetizers!
We spent over a «Benjamin» on a BBQ Pulled Chicken Sandwich w/​1 side, 2 Tiny Ribs… Yes, I said 2 Tiny Ribs… BBQ Nachos, 12(pc) — BBQ Wings, and Drinks. Mind you these items were appetizers more so than the main menu items. In addition, we ordered a small side of grilled Brussels Sprouts and Mac N’ Cheese. The serving size of the sides were very small. Overall the food portions were okay, but the prices were expensive given the quality of the food.
The food and sides tasted like it had been prepared hours before and either sat under a heat lamp or probably was reheated even. My BBQ Pulled Chicken sandwich was dry and tasteless. It tasted more like just sauce and bread. The ribs were also dry, over-​cooked and not tender. The Nachos were decent. They looked so appealing but most of the portions, especially in the center, were very soggy. The Mac n’ Cheese… let’s just say that Metamucil taste and goes down better.
The saving grace for our visit was the BBQ Wings appetizer and Drinks. Both were on point and delicious. They really nailed it on the wings! And, the drinks were strong! A honorable mention to the collard greens too. They were bit spicy, but very well-​seasoned and good. So that makes 2 appetizers (Nachos & Wings) + 1 side, and drinks… out of the «6 items ordered»…a thumbs up! The rest thumbs down!
The service was fast and prompt. Our waitress was very friendly and attentive; but the BBQ was lacking.
Would I return… Can’t say it will be my last but definitely leaves a little to be desired!

Not a fan unfortunately.
My husband & I were on the hunt for Bön Chon & unfortunately I took a wrong term. BBQ seemed interesting & we’re always eager to try new restaurants near by so we went in.
Overall, the service was fine. The wooden tables & chairs look like they are great décor for the area near the ball park. The arms on the chair however were not screwed in properly & so they were quite shaky. This would be a good place for a happy hour given the large number of large tables & they have a good selection of beers.
I ordered the chili (no cheese/​sour cream) with a side of brussels sprouts. As others have said, the sides are small for what you’re paying (especially relative to the price of the meat). The brussels sprouts also just weren’t that well done. They promised deep fried with parmesan cheese. But they were just lightly roaster or underfried. Not very appetizing.
The chili had no beans and was quite light on meat. I took the cornbread out as well & was left with not much substance in the chili. I’m sure that this might be due to a regional preference for whether chili has beans or not, but I was just disappointed. I left a fair bit in the bowl because it was just a bit too spicy.
My husband ordered the brisket with sides of kale & coleslaw. I tried a bit of the brisket & it was good, although nothing compared to what you can get at Rose’s Luxury nearby. He also seemed to be a fan of the sides, although I can’t comment because I didn’t try them.
He would probably give a better review than me, but I wasn’t impressed.

Only one recommendation. Get the Jamaican Jerk Chicken. Every piece of the chicken including every little bit of the breast had a nice smokey flavor. The skin which is usually my favorite wasn’t just great… it was divine… a veritable orgy of bold smokey flavors, As far as chicken goes, Nando’s doesn’t hold a candle to Willies. If you want to split hairs and say one is a rub, the other is marinated, etc… then so be it. But if all you want is great tasting chicken, this is pretty darn close to the best I’ve ever had.
I was less impressed with the jerk chicken sandwich version. It didn’t have that kick in your mouth taste. The brisket, usually a tough piece of meat, was super soft, almost flaky.