YinzBurgh BBQ

Well… what a shame I truly was looking forward to eating here… I went there as a guest of a friend .my instructions were to eat what I wanted
So I tried the ribs… collard greens… Mac N cheese… corn bread
In order
Ribs .tasted and smelled like kerosene…
Corn bread… never had chewy dry tasteless corn bread before
Mac N cheese… well that was a mistake is all I can say
Collard greens… mine are better
What a huge disappointment
This place was toted as exceptional!!!
Great place to eat.
Waste of time… money…appetite was ruined
Perhaps if the owners actually learned how to cook. the food might have been edible
Wish there was a less then 1 star symbol

We got a smoked turkey from here for Thanksgiving and it’s safe to say this was the most popular item on the table. Everyone LOVED it. Such great flavor and a nice spin on your typical Thanksgiving bird. I’m not usually a big turkey fan but this was something I went back for seconds on. The smoked turkey gravy that we made from the drippings was also a huge hit! Would definitely recommend ordering this for a family gathering or next Thanksgiving… I know it will be on our table again.

We got a smoked Turkey for Thanksgiving and it was DELICIOUS! So moist and flavorful… it was everyone’s favorite dish. I made a regular turkey breast as well and while it was very good, the smoked turkey was the winner. Will do this again for sure!

Did not know about this place previously until I came here with a friend who was visiting from out of town and some others, but I’m glad I was able to come here. The owner was really accommodating and gave us a run down as to how ordering worked in the joint. He also gave us the opportunity to try some of the sauces for the meat that are all made in house. My favorite sauce was probably the signature red … wasn’t too tarty, but it was also flavorful enough to be considered an excellent addition to whatever meat is ordered.
I ended up ordering the #8 combo, which essentially contained the pork ribs, pulled pork, and pork brisket. Personally, I found the pork ribs to be delicious … glad it wasn’t dry since that’s probably the easiest way to mess ribs up by overcooking them. The pork brisket was also satisfactory, but it’s hard to not crave Texas BBQ especially when I’ve had it recently. I found the pulled pork to be a bit on the dry side … probably ended up being overcooked, although having three different kinds of sauce (comes with combo) does help alleviate that small issue. Overall, I was pretty satisfied. This is a good place for BBQ if anyone is craving it in Pittsburgh.

2.5 stars rounding up
One of the few true BBQ places in Pittsburgh that has definitely has some positives but also has plenty of room for improvement.
I came here with my girlfriend on a Saturday afternoon. She had never really had BBQ and I had recently returned from a trip to Austin having quite possibly the best BBQ ever at Franklin’s (see other review) and was really craving some brisket,
We went in and it was just us and the owner who was working in the kitchen. I looked at the menu and noticed it was in arbitrary sizes (S, M, L, XL) and not in concrete weight so i asked how much weight this was and got a round about answer which he used various degrees of hunger to describe the portions.
So i asked my very indecisive girlfriend what she wanted and she was like a beer in headlights because she had «real BBQ» so i asked for a small sample or the brisket so she could try it… The owner looked puzzled like this question had never been asked before. After about a minute he emerged with a small piece of brisket she tried it and said she liked it.
He began explaining about BBQ and how he used a dry rub rather than a sauce when cooking it, and then segued into a 10 min monologue that went over BBQ, his life, business etc. We patiently waited for him to finish and then ordered. He kept giving suggestions and kept trying to up sell us saying that it would not be enough, like he was calling me out.
So we got brisket, beans, mac and cheese, cornbread and pulled pork and cole slaw. Ended up being like $ 45 with drinks. Within a few minutes the food came out and i was actually surprised that it wasn’t that much food.
The Food was a bit underwhelming (perhaps because i had just returned from the benchmark of BBQ in Austin) the brisket was dry, and needed the sauces to be eaten. Pulled pork was probably the highlight. Beans were good, coleslaw mac and cheese were avg, Corn bread was soooooo dry.
Owner came out several times and continued the monologue from before and we patiently listened
We ended up finishing everything minus one of the cornbreads. The 40 or so minutes we were there no one else came in.
Now i know its not Texas, but at Franklins in Austin we got about $ 160-​$ 180 of food for ten people and we had leftovers for days… literally. So the bang for the buck just wasn’t there in comparison.
If you have never had real BBQ i would definitely recommend this place because it has a nice selection. But if you know BBQ then this does not stand out.

This BBQ place is a jewel in the rough. Great place to stop for lunch. It is located near UPMC Shadyside. It is a small place with few seats. I ordered the small pulled pork sandwich with the regular BBQ sauce. This is their most popular and was the perfect balance of BBQ and slightly sweet. But they offer other options including two variations of spicy BBQ sauce and a honey mustard flavor which also tasted good. The girl at the front was super nice and helpful, giving us a taste of each flavor. She also let us taste their Mac and Cheese which was addicting. The small sandwich is a nice size if you are medium hungry. But if you are famished go for the large. It’s that good! The slab of ribs also made my mouth water but we will have to go back for those.

Just had food catered from here at a work event — couldn’t have been more pleased! I don’t know much about southern food, but I rarely find it to be super veg-​friendly.
The collard greens were just the right mix of garlicky and vinegary, and I really enjoyed the black-​eyed peas. The mac and cheese was flavorful, although the sauce had congealed somewhat by the time I got to it. The real showstopper was the smoked tofu. I know, I know, it sounds like a crazy thing to eat, even if you like tofu. But, it was really, really delicious. The smoke gave the tofu a nice skin, and it tasted woody. They captured that real smokey flavor that I haven’t had since I first went veg. I’m definitely going to check this place out in person!

Get Brisket and Ribs — can’t go wrong with it. They have 6 or 7 different sauces. I tried BBQ sauce and Tomato based one — both amazing. Unfortunately, they have no beers.

Solid BBQ. I ordered the Pulled Pork sandwich with Afterburner sauce and a side of cole slaw. The pork was decent. Worth the price. The sauce was VERY underwhelming and almost no kick at all for something called «Afterburner» and described as spicy. Cole slaw was really sweet, which made it weird.
Ho-​hum BBQ joint. Nothing stood out, but for the price it was decent.

No-​frills Georgia-​style bbq place, where it’s obvious they know their bbq! All house-​made sauces, and plenty of meats and sides combos to choose from. Bbq was well-​executed, moist, not dry. What more can you ask for?

Small carryout/​eat in btw joint. Good smoked meats, large sides. Try all the sauces before you order.
Not a great dining area. Carry out is preferable.

I had them cater an event for me. They arrived on time and set everything up. There was a problem with the order, but the owner personally handled it. No complaints there. Was very pleased with the service. The cost was very reasonable.
The meats are smoked and then you add the the sauce. The brisket was most excellent. It did not last long. I probably should have ordered more. The pulled pork was done to perfection. The chicken was also a big hit. The sauces were all quite tasty. There is really something for everyone.
As for the sides, the black eyed peas were quite good. The chili-​Q was smash hit. Everyone was raving about it.
Overall, an excellent job. If you are in the mood for bbq, check out there place. It is essentially a take out joint with a few tables for seating

I’ve gotten takeout from here twice, and will continue to go back if only for the Afterburner sauce and that amazing mac & cheese. The owner kindly takes you through a sauce tasting on your first visit so that you can figure out what style BBQ fits your palate (we liked the majority of them). He also let us try several of the sides, which are all vegetarian, but personally, I can’t handle greens without pork.
The short ribs were delicious and tender, and the brisket and chicken were similarly fall-​apart but I’m just not into the «sauce on the side» deal – I like my flavors mixed through. On that note, take some Afterburner and stir it through that mac… epicly good. Their mac is a stovetop mac and is like a black peppered, grownup Kraft made with real things (which is a huge compliment from me as I love the blue box).
I’ll still give the pulled chicken a shot because I think that might be easier to mix sauce through, but for me, the meats NEED the (delicious) sauce – there’s not quite enough flavor rendered from the rub & smoke to eat standalone. There’s not a ton of seating, so I would recommend carry-​out for a crowd… they are well-​versed in logical packaging for your eating ease.

The place is small with limited seats, so probably not ideal for a large group eating in, but the food is perfect for take out! The service was super friendly and accommodating. They recognized that it was our first time there so gave us a sample of all of their sauces. I really enjoyed their brisket with the hot golden mustard-​based sauce. The brisket just melted in my mouth with each bite. For sides, had the chili and black-​eyed peas. The chili was a bit too sweet for my taste. The black-​eyed pea was more like a bean stew, which wasn’t what I was expecting. Overall, I had a great dinning experience here and definitely recommend this place for those craving grilled food. Prices are reasonable and you get a good portion. Thanks for taking good care of us Yinzburgh!

CM and I got takeout from here yesterday. He went to bed with a headache last night, and both of us woke up this morning feeling sick to our stomachs. I’ve had major digestive problems and have felt weak all day, and have been lying in bed for most of it. It’s now 24 hrs. later and my appetite hasn’t returned.
It really saddens me to have to reduce my rating to 1 star, since this is the place that introduced me to BBQ. However, I’ve eaten at hundreds of places in PGH, and this is the only one that’s made me sick to my stomach. I hope the owners take heed and fix whatever problem (s) may have caused CM’s and my illness.
Unfortunately, I doubt I’ll be back. :-(

had pulled pork wraps and full rack pork rib.
AWESOME and AMAZING.
Better than most of pork bbq places I ve been to. Better than Dinosaur BBQ in Rochester, NY
My 4 year old daughter loved it.

Tucked between a KFC, and a pizza place, I half expected this to be a chain quality restaurant. With a name like YinzBurgh though, I should have expected it to be what it is — a home townie kind of place with great hospitality. And pretty great food too.
If you haven’t been there yet, they will take you on a tour across the south with their six or so different sauces: a couple tomato based, a couple mustard, a vinegar, and of course a sweeter bbq style.
On my pulled pork sandwich (weakness) I chose the bbq flavor AND the spicy mustard based one, which come on the side to be put on later. I was torn. I could not choose just one. They both delivered.
For the side I also had the same problem. Cole slaw, or mac n cheese? Clearly I need both. I was hyped up by the guy behind the counter about their mac n cheese, so my standards were set high. Maybe this is why I was unfortunately a bit disappointed by it. It’s not toooo cheesy, there’s cheese in it, just not gooey or stringy or soupy or anything like that. Just a coating. The cole slaw was also a bit bland and lacking in my opinion, BUT, I did come just before closing so there’s a chance I got the bottom of the barrel and it was just plain worn out by then. We’re gonna go with that, and I’ll stop by again during the day and give those things another shot.
All in all, not bad. I will go again especially since it’s the closest bbq place to my house. Oh, and pro tip; I suggest parking in the KFC parking lot right next to it, you can do that.

I stopped by here today for lunch with my wife. The inside of the place isn’t much to look at with a table for 4, a high top table for 6 and then two park like benches to wait for to go orders. The walls were also painted red to orange to yellow which helped to evoke the thought of fire. The cashier (owner?) here greeted us right away and asked if we had ever been there before which we had not. Upon hearing that he proceeded to tell us about the type of BBQ they did and helped us to taste all 6 of their sauces.
I ended up going with the beef brisket sandwich with the Carolina vinegar BBQ while my wife went with a pulled pork wrap with hot Carolina mustard BBQ sauce. We then split sides of Mac and cheese and collard greens. The sandwich was pretty awesome as the brisket was both tender and had a great smokey flavor. My only complaints with it being that the bun didn’t seem to be toasted and it was tough to get the vinegar based sauce on the meat. My wife really enjoyed her pulled pork wrap and had no complaints about it. The sides ended up being really good too with the Mac and cheese having visible pepper in it and the collard greens having huge cloves of soft garlic in it. While not something I had seen before, it helped enhance the flavor and my wife and I quickly finished them.
The bottom line for me is that I will head back here again in the future. The guy at the cash register was super nice and I really loved all of the food that I tasted.

I had high hopes for this place based on reviews from my fellow Unilocalers, but unfortunately I did not love my recent experience here.
I had been meaning to try this place for awhile and lo and behold, I came across a Groupon (hooray for Groupon!) So the hubby and I went this past weekend. The Groupon was good for two sandwiches/​wraps and two sides.
The place itself is small — it’s almost like an indoor BBQ stand. It only has a few benches for waiting and maybe four small dine-​in tables. We went during dinner time, and while it wasn’t packed, there was a steady stream of customers.
Our ordering experience was not great. The Groupon was good for two sandwiches and sides, but when I went to order my sandwich (pulled chicken, white meat), I was told that they were only doing dark meat chicken for the Groupon. So, two things about this. First, to exclude white meat chicken sandwiches from the Groupon seems nonsensical… the pulled chicken sandwich is $ 4.75 ($ 1.00 more for white meat)…the cheapest sandwich on the menu. So why would they exclude this? It would make them the most money from the Groupon. But second, and most importantly — nowhere on the Groupon did it say that this was an exclusion. In fact, if it did, I may not have bought the Groupon in the first place. So, needless to say, this was annoying to learn as I was ordering.
I wasn’t in the mood for dark meat, so while I was debating what to do, the owner came over and agreed to give me a white meat sandwich if I would pay the $ 1.00 difference. I felt like I was being nickel-​and-​dimed, but whatever, it was a dollar. So I said fine. But then they couldn’t figure out how to charge me just a dollar on the iPad that they use as a cash register. Meanwhile, a line of customers was building up behind us. I can tell the owner was frazzled, so it probably would’ve been easier just to let the dollar go, but she kept trying to find a way to charge me. I finally said I would just buy a couple of drinks and some cornbread and then add the extra dollar as a tip. Problem solved, but I wasn’t exactly feeling the warm customer service fuzzies here.
Next was the sauce-​tasting part, but after the whole white meat chicken debacle, there was a fairly long line behind us, so the cashier went through the sauces at rapid fire speed. I didn’t really have enough time to think about which one I wanted and felt rushed, so I just went with the first one I tried (the smoky and sweet BBQ).
So customer service issues aside, how was the food? Well, I ended up getting the ill-​fated white meat chicken sandwich, my hubby got the brisket sandwich, and then we got mac and cheese and coleslaw for sides, plus some cornbread. My sandwich was pretty dry (which is unsurprising, since I picked the driest meat on the planet). However, what I was disappointed with was the flavor. I first tried a bite without any sauce to taste just the meat, and there really wasn’t much to it… maybe a very faint hint of smokiness, but other than that, it was really bland. Once I doused the sandwich in the BBQ sauce, the taste improved dramatically… the sauce had a great balance of sweet and smoky flavor with a hint of spice. That being said, it would’ve been nice if the meat had a little flavor of its own that the sauce complemented, instead of having the flavor of the whole sandwich be dependent on the sauce. The other off-​putting part of the sandwich was that there were a lot of bones. I understand if one or two make their way in there, but I was chomping down on a small bone like every other bite or so. It was gross pulling those out of my mouth as I was eating.
The other thing that I found odd is that we dined in, but yet we were still given little plastic cups with our sauces in them. Why not have the sauces in squeeze bottles at the tables? I understand doing it for take out orders, but if you’re eating in, it would be nice to be able to use as much or as little sauce as you want (or even use multiple sauces). Plus the little plastic cups just seemed wasteful.
On a positive note, my husband loved his brisket sandwich. He reported that it was well-​cooked, melt-​in-​your-​mouth tender, and deliciously smoky. He got the hot honey mustard sauce and thought that it struck a perfect sweet-​spicy balance that nicely complemented the meat.
As for the sides, they were a mixed bag. The mac and cheese was okay, but nothing special. It was flavorful, but it was kinda oily instead of rich and creamy. We both enjoyed the coleslaw the most. It was tangy, well-​seasoned, and had a perfect consistency — creamy without being too thick. The biggest disappointment was the cornbread. Although it looked appetizing, it was really dry and completely devoid of flavor.
Overall, given the Groupon debacle and the inconsistent food quality, I’d have to say that I left feeling pretty meh about the experience overall. I’m not going to be rushing back here anytime soon.

I had a city dining card for a free hoppin’ john and I heard nothing but good things about this place so I figured my boyfriend and I would give it a whirl. It was an awesome experience.
Right when we walked in the door we were greeted by one of the owners. He asked us if we had ever been there before (which we have not) and then proceeded to explain their southern style BBQ and let us taste test all of the home made BBQ sauces. My boyfriend and I loved the hot mustard and spicy tomato based BBQ sauces. I also really enjoyed the tang at the end of the Carolina vinegar based sauce.
I ordered a pulled chicken sandwich, coleslaw, Mac and cheese and the hoppin’ john (rice, beans and collard greens mixed). My boyfriend ordered coleslaw and the beef brisket sandwich. Both of our sandwiches were tender and delicious. We both added the coleslaw on top of our sandwiches, which gave them a nice twist. The Mac and cheese was delicious– not too creamy but with a lot of flavor. I loved the coleslaw– it was processed very thin and was packed with flavor. The hoppin’ John was delicious as well– I probably wouldn’t have ordered it if I didn’t have a card for a free one though-I’m not a huge bean fan. The collard greens gave it a nice southern twist.
The customer service was great, the food was awesome and I LOVED that they serve vegan and vegetarian options– what other BBQ joint in the burgh offers smoked tofu? My only issue was the bun– it fell apart pretty easy making the sandwich a little difficult to eat. Other than that, it was an awesome experience and I would definitely go back!