Grand Ole BBQ Flinn Springs

Incredibly popular for a reason. With the amount of cars along the road you know people trek here on the weekends. It’s huge inside with more outdoor seating than inside. Live music stage, large projector screen, outside full bar. They do it right. The vibe is truly unique, it doesn’t feel like San Diego. Great draft beer options and the food is obviously stellar. Tri tip sandwich was really good as were the fries. A must visit!

A real gem about 20 mins from San Diego and 15 mins from Alpine. The atmosphere is old 60s western steak house. The dining area and bar are huge. The back patio is even bigger. It’s always lively when I’ve visited. The food is exceptional and well priced for a BBQ joint. I got the Austin, California burrito. The brisket was excellent and smoky. The barracho fries were a stand out as well. The tap list is excellent with lots of local brews. A must stop if you are in the area!

Came here tonight with my husband and daughter. We were told it would be a 30-45 minute wait, and it ended up only being around 15-20 minutes, which was nice, but then it took us probably another 15-20 minutes to receive our drinks, from the time we sat down.

Our server told us they had sold out of the sausage, tri-tip, and smoked turkey around 4 pm. From reading other reviews it seems that running out of things is a pretty common occurrence here. So I don’t understand why they can’t plan better, knowing they aren’t keeping up with demand. I was really disappointed because I came here wanting to try the turkey.

My husband said his brisket sandwich was really good and said the bread was really good too. The pulled pork was okay. Didn’t have much flavor/smokiness, and I would have liked to see more crispy bits in there for added texture/flavor. Sauces were really good, truthfully probably better than the actual BBQ itself which was disappointing. Potato salad was the BOMB. Green beans were okay — crunchy and had a weird taste like cleaning supplies.

My husband seemed to like the white beans with bacon more than I did. I would have preferred baked beans, which in my experience being from the South is more standard BBQ fare. The sweet pickles were delicious. My daughter got chicken tenders and fries. She liked the tenders and hardly touched the fries. I tried both and they were good.

The “flood pie” was ridiculously huge, very rich and far too heavy on the peanut butter. The menu describes the flood pie as “A chocolate, peanut butter, graham cracker & pretzel delight!” but there were no pretzels, hardly any chocolate, and there were nuts and whipped cream and caramel sauce on top, which wasn’t mentioned in the description. So they need to update the description. Someone described it as mud pie, but this is most definitely NOT mud pie. It’s basically an entire jar of peanut butter on top of a small crust. Their Google reviews talk about how frequently they sell out of the pie and judging by the size of the slices they serve, this isn’t surprising. They could easily cut the slices in half. I mean it could have been split between 3-4 people, it was that massive. And it wasn’t even anything to write home about.

If it weren’t for wanting to try the much-hyped and frequently sold-out smoked turkey, I probably wouldn’t come back. I might eat the pulled pork again, or maybe the brisket, and the potato salad was amazing, but potato salad alone isn’t worth a visit, and overall I was expecting better quality for what I paid ($80 for two adults and one kid, and that’s BEFORE a tip).