This Phenix City BBQ restaurant brought back memories of my childhood. Our review
I’ve eaten a lot of barbecue in my time reviewing restaurants in the Chattahoochee Valley. When I started these food reviews in 2022, it was just going to be a series of stories exclusively on the BBQ restaurants in the Columbus area and what makes each one unique.
However, we scrapped that idea after we decided to review a variety of restaurants. My cholesterol levels probably thanked me for that.
While in my truck with Ledger-Enquirer visual journalist Mike Haskey, he told me about some barbecue restaurants in Phenix City. Most of those I’ve never eaten at, including Mike & Ed’s Bar-B-Que.
So we decided to grab lunch at the Mike & Ed’s in Phenix City, 2001 Crawford Road. After finding a space in the additional parking lot behind the restaurant, I was delighted to see wood being split behind the restaurant for the smoker.
Smoking wood combines with cooking pork for an aroma that sends a dose of dopamine coursing throughout my body.
Walking into Mike & Ed’s, a familiarity hit me as I saw chalkboards with specials, some items written down on pieces of paper and a log cabin feel to the decor. It felt like the BBQ restaurants I grew up going to: simple, without the glitz and glam that tend to indicate barbecue that’s going to be some dry and flavorless interpretation of BBQ.
I had to go with one of my go-to orders from BBQ restaurants growing up: the sliced barbecue pork plate with Brunswick stew and potato salad.
I’ve always found it best to get BBQ sliced when you get it in Alabama. The barbecue from Mike & Ed’s was amazing! The pork was incredibly moist with plenty of flavor and just a slight salty flavor.
I decided to stay away from the mustard-based sauces and choose the sweet and smoky sauce. I believe it could have been molasses-based due to the dark color, and it had a heavy smoky flavor (possibly hickory) that you typically get from ingredients like liquid smoke.
The potato salad was incredibly creamy from the mayo with a sharp flavor from the mustard and red onions. A light hint of garlic and onion powder also seemed to shine through.
The Brunswick stew had a strong peppery flavor with very little acidity from the tomato influences in the dish. The stew was also fairly thick from the meat — a very hearty dish for a time in the year when the weather can’t yet decide whether it’s springtime.
Mike got the Thursday special (the half BBQ chicken with two sides). He let me try a piece of the chicken, and it was fantastic. The chicken seemed to melt like butter in my mouth as it was extremely tender. The barbecue flavor was so strong, it didn’t warrant the need for additional sauce on it.
Lastly, I decided to order a jalapeno sausage dog all the way (chili, mustard, ketchup, onions, slaw and pickles). I split it with Mike because even my enormous appetite couldn’t handle a whole sausage dog on top of the BBQ plate I had already eaten.
The sausage dog had a little bit of every flavor. A smoky flavor from the sausage, a creamy and vinegary texture from the slaw, an earthy flavor from the chili and a sweet and tangy flavor from the combination of the ketchup, mustard and pickles. The onions weren’t overpowering, and they were so subtle, they seemed to disappear in the flavors of the other toppings.
I’ll definitely have to head back over to Mike & Ed’s when I want some food that reminds me of the comforts of my old home state of Alabama.