This Columbus barbecue joint might have the city’s best lunch deal
For only $8 at Neicy’s BBQ, I got a chipped sandwich, a sauced chicken leg quarter, a bag of chips and a sweet tea.
When I finished the contents of the foam container, I felt like a thief. But the food is some of Columbus’ best barbecue and, surprisingly, it is that cheap. It might just be the city’s best lunch combo.
The barbecue joint occupies part of a small, triangular-shaped lot near Andrews Road and 23rd Avenue, up the street from an auto shop and a used tire store. You can smell the smoke from the large oil drum-shaped grill as soon as you park.
When the Ledger-Enquirer’s video extraordinaire Mike Haskey and myself walked through the front doors, the small ordering area was filled with road crews and workers on their lunch breaks.
As the line shortened and folks filtered out, we placed our orders. The lights were off in the restaurant’s seating area, so we took this as a sign that our meal must be taken to-go.
The mix-match combo is simple. Customers choose two from the following (or double up on their favorite): the sausage dog, a chicken leg quarter and a chipped barbecue sandwich. Haskey opted for a sauceless leg quarter and the sausage dog with peppers and onions.
The roughly 10-minute drive back to Ledger-Enquirer headquarters was tough for this hungry reporter. The smell of pork and chicken filled the car as my stomach growled. The camera always eats first on Foodie Friday, but I managed to sneak a little taste of the sauce. That’s when I knew we had something special.
The meat is the star — I’ll get to that in a minute — but the sauce is wonderful. Like a lot of Columbus barbecue, it’s that familiar shade of yellow-burnt orange, likely the result of a close ketchup-mustard ratio.
It’s thick enough to cling to a leg quarter without running all over the bottom of the container. It starts sweet and builds to the more sour mustard notes, finishing with just a hint of spice. When the sandwich and chicken were all gone, I used two white bread slices to sop up as much of that sauce as I could.
But sauce is nothing if you don’t have the meats. The chicken flaked and pulled easy from the leg quarter, like a tender piece of fish. The sauced skin was crisp, and it brought me back to the summer cookouts of my younger years.
The chipped pork, covered with that delicious sauce, was tender and smoky. The meat-to-bun ratio was just right. If you told me I could only eat Neicy’s chipped sandwiches for the remainder of my days, I think I’d be happy about it.
Haskey cut me off a piece of the grilled sausage. It was crisp and incredibly cooked. I couldn’t help but think how well the sauce would go on that, too. You can’t go wrong.
Reader, I can’t speak about the mac and cheese or other sides listed on the menu board. I can’t tell you about the cake slices for sale on the counter. I can’t talk about the ribs, for which Neicy’s is well regarded. My funds are limited, and I can only eat so much.
But I can tell you that Neicy’s $8 mix-match combo might be the city’s best lunch deal. If you don’t go, you’re missing out.
This story was originally published July 2, 2021 at 10:00 AM.