I FINALLY made it to Pickles & Bones Barbecue up in Milford, and wow, man! That stuff was good.
As a trucker, I’ve had the fortune (or misfortune) of eating at BBQ joints across this great nation of ours, and I can say for certain that this is one of my favorites. From Massachusetts to North Carolina, from Tennessee to Texas, I’ve eaten it all, and seriously... the husband & wife team at Pickles & Bones know what they’re doing.
I’ve noticed that at a lot of BBQ joints, they’ll either serve you delicious meats with less-than-stellar sides or less-than-stellar meats with delicious sides, and you will hardly ever find a place that serves both tasty meat AND tasty sides, but Pickles & Bones does!
I ordered the 2 meat plate with brisket and ribs, and while a rib extremist/purist might argue that ribs shouldn’t be “fall off the bone,” I don’t care... these were great! They’re better than the ribs I smoke at home, and I can make some damn fine ribs. The brisket — how they make such insanely thick yet tender brisket, is beyond me. It’s either witchcraft, or love, or maybe a bit of both. The hoecakes with sorghum butter. If there’s a Heaven, I hope it’s nothing but hoecake clouds and sorghum butter rain up there. The potato salad was also legit, and since I have zero self-control, I ordered the banana pudding, and it, too, was incredibly tasty.
NOTES: I forgot to cruise/creep around back to see if their smokers were going, though I’m sure they were because they’ve posted pics of their smokers running on here in the past. This is the true sign of a good BBQ joint. I once went to a joint where there was ZERO blue smoke in the sky, and I should’ve just left. But I didn’t 😕
NOTES (continued): I HATE pickles. They make me angry, but I ate every one of the house-made pickles Pickles & Bones gave me. I didn’t try any sauces, though I will next time around. There’s another BBQ joint in town that’s probably more well known, but they don’t even serve brisket, which means they should probably drop the “BBQ” from their name. Anyhoo, P&B straight up destroys that other place. Oh, and the owner of P&B offered to give me a hand when I was juggling my bag of BBQ & my daughter’s car seat, and that sort of kindness is hard to find these days.