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Brank's BBQ & Catering
- Price Range:
-
$$
- Accepts Credit Cards:
- Yes
- Parking:
- Private Lot
- Attire:
- Casual
- Good for Groups:
- Yes
- Good for Kids:
- Yes
- Take-out:
- Yes
- Waiter Service:
- Yes
- Wheelchair Accessible:
- Yes
- Outdoor Seating:
- Yes
- Alcohol:
- None
4 reviews for Brank's BBQ & Catering
The best overall bbq joint in Washington state! The only thing done better somewhere else are the ribs (Jones bbq is my fave for ribs) but that is just one item out of their tasty arsenal. Awesome bbq sauce, nice smoke flavor on the brisket, bread is fresh and unique. And yes they have sweet tea!
Service has always been good and helpful. I will consider Brank's for catering if I ever host a large event at some point. Their location is right off of 167 so if you are ever somewhere close to Auburn, definitely try them.
Brank's is, to me, the exact reason that most Washingtonians don't know what really great BBQ tastes like. If you grow up eating this and think it's what BBQ should taste like, you won't know any better and you'll just keep eating it. But, if you travel a lot and eat it in KC, Texas, or North Carolina, you quickly find that this style of BBQ doesn't do it for you anymore.
We ordered the Trail Boss Plate, which consists of two choices of meat. Both of us chose pulled pork (because I'm a North Carolinian, I have to and that's the LAW) and brisket, with their cowboy beans and slaw. Our friends had chicken and ribs, so there was a lot of sharing. The chicken was dry and leathery and the brisket was actually more like strips of under-dried jerky than anything I know as brisket. The ribs were probably the best of the entrees, but the pulled pork was an utter and dismal disappointment. Here's the capsule description of GREAT pulled-pork barbecue: INTENSELY smoked, seasoned with NOTHING but salt and pepper, UNSAUCED, firm and slightly chewy, moist but not swimming in juices, steaming hot when delivered to the table, closely trimmed of all fat and gristle, and wildly aromatic with HICKORY smoke - not mesquite, not applewood, not oak, HICKORY. Brank's was a pile of mushy, stringy, lukewarm pig in a side bowl full of juices and less aroma than you'd get from taking a big sniff 400 yards from a small fire. It wasn't smoked with hickory or even the omnipresent mesquite, which would have been preferable - mesquite is at least spicy smoke, like hickory - but with what our server described as "fruitwoods". (Apple, pear, and anything else that falls under that catch-all description, I guess) The only fruitwood with ANY spice is cherry and that has maybe half as much as mesquite and maybe a quarter that of hickory. The smoke tasted like what you get from alder-planking a salmon: faint, unassertive, and one-dimensional.
The beans were freakin' WONDERFUL, though. I'd probably go back to Brank's for those, if I was, for unimaginable reasons, driving through their Sumner industrial park and was ravenous. I love baked beans, any style, and theirs were everything the BBQ wasn't. The slaw was nicely flavored but, as any Southerner knows, slaw is a palate cleanser and cooler, functioning as relief from the heat, smoke, and spice of the BBQ. (If it isn't doing THAT, you'd do just as well to go outside and chew some grass, IMHO) So, slaw is supposed to be COLD. Brank's was warm and the dressing was close to separating.
I gave up a few years ago on taking those "ya GOTTA go there!" recommendations from well-meaning friends who stumbled across a new out-of-the-way BBQ place. They simply NEVER pan out. And I've sought out and tried every BBQ joint within a 25 mile-radius of Seattle and have found ONE - Three Pigs in Bellevue - which was passable. Some of the most celebrated - like Dixie's in Bellevue, with their fatty, undersmoked, grey meat and that insipid, tasteless, test-of-manhood, arrested-development NON-sauce, "The Man" - I've found inedible enough that I simply left the meal on the plate and went home. Brank's wasn't THAT bad. The place is pleasant, clean, and roomy and the staff is wonderful but, at least in BBQ terms, It's All About The Q. And Brank's is only going to turn your crank if you've never eaten BBQ anywhere but WA.
Went here yesterday for the first time with friends who go here almost every weekend for the all you can eat rib tips. Started off poorly when the hostess was on the phone taking an order and didn't even acknowledge us to say "be with you in a second." Then a second hostess/waitress came into the front area only to answer another phone ringing. Rather than put them on hold and take care of us first, she took the call. Had we not been with friends I might have walked out the door at that point. However we stayed and proceeded to have a decent lunch. Took a little while to get our orders even though 3 of us ordered the special of the day and figured they would have a lot of them pre set up. Girlfriend had her salad order messed up. They thought she wanted it to go?? BBQ rib tips all you can eat for $8.95 a good deal. Wish the sides were a little bigger. Cole slaw, beans and potato salad all very good. Fries were the skin on kind and looked overdone to me. I didn't even want to steal one of my friends plate. Corn bread was a tiny muffin, I'd prefer a nice big square of it. BBQ sauce a little sweet with a weird spice like cinnamon in it. I'd bring my own sauce from home next time. I'm a former Texan too and this place has nothing on any Texas BBQ place I've been to. Also they don't serve any liquor and a nice beer sure would have been better than a soda or sweet tea. Also no desserts listed on the menu. Peach Cobbler or Banana Pudding would have been perfect. Will go again to try the brisket & pulled pork sandwich. Decor was very pleasant.
OK - peeps, this is as good as it gets in Sumner, WA. My husband is from Texas so even though we were getting married in Washington, we wanted to infuse a little Texan fun into the weekend. We had Branks cater our day-before party at my parents lake house with great BBQ. The food was delish and the true 5th star comes for best service around. We realized after about an hour that people were chowing down and that we would need more food. One quick call to Branks and the owner was back in the van and at our house with more plates of hot, finger licking BBQ.
