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Hot Sauce Williams Barbecue
7815 Carnegie Rd.
Cleveland, Ohio 44103
216-391-2230
You know what beats the hell out of chillin' the Muni lot before a Browns game? Chowing down on 3 pounds of chopped pork at the restaurant crowned the "Best Barbecue in Cleveland", Hot Sauce Williams Barbecue. Sure, we had to take our own lives into our hands to get there, but its the journey that makes the destination that much better, right?
I've seen a lot of reviews of Hot Sauce Williams and they all have pussyfooted around a major issue involved in eating there, its in a bad neighborhood. Andrew Carnegie might be a bit disappointed to see the street that was named after him. It's the kind of area a honkey like myself wouldn't be well advised to spend a lot of time in after dark. That being said, we visited around noon and had absolutely no problems. I don't want to keep you from visiting Hot Sauce Williams, but I do think you should take the neighborhood into consideration when planning your visit.
Jason and I decided that we were a bit too old to be freezing our asses off in a parking lot 6 hours before the Browns game, so we swung by Hot Sauce Williams to try it out for the first time and get our eat on. Luckily for us, it is virtually impossible to miss the restaurant as it is painted in some hideous colors, hot pink and a very ugly green-grey. Its also hard to miss the billowing smoke coming of the large barbecue grill behind the restaurant. Just getting out of the truck and smelling that sweet smoke got my mouth watering.
Good to see the Stevie Wonder found work after his music career ended.
Walking into the restaurant it was obvious the staff was in the process of switching over from breakfast as they were bringing out all of the side dishes and fried chicken to put behind the cafeteria style sneeze guard. We were going to be the second customers of this lunch shift behind some he/she that couldn't make up its mind when choosing sides. Its indecision gave Jason and I time to peruse the offerings. Just looking at the menu its easy to see that Hot Sauce Williams is more of a soul food restaurant than a barbecue joint. The menu was littered with classic soul food offerings like fried chicken, catfish, yams, collard greens and black eyed peas.
After anticipating some barbecued pork for the last few days there wasn't a chance in hell of me ordering anything else. I chose the pork shoulder dinner ($8.75) with french fries, 4 pieces of white bread, cole slaw and about 17 gallons of the famous Hot Sauce Williams Barbecue sauce. Jason must have felt down with the brown because he opted for the po' boy ($3.50) and 3 fried chicken wings ($2.55), all of which was covered with the barbecue sauce.
I think it may have been because of the breakfast to lunch switch over, but it took quite a while for Jason and I to get our food. We didn't mind though as it gave us time to really get to know each other. Ok, I lied, we spent the whole time planning our escape route should we become innocent bystanders in an armed robbery. The nice lady helping us must have seen the fear in our eyes though because she packed all of our food to go. We weren't going anywhere though, we were going to be eating at the restaurant, that and we figured my truck had already been stolen. (I'm never going to be allowed back here.)
Taking my first bite convinced me that Hot Sauce Williams had been given the title of "Best Barbecue in Cleveland" by default as my pork shoulder was not barbecued. If it was cooked on a grill it was wrapped so tight that all smoke flavor was prevented from being absorbed into the meat. That being said I still thought it was very good. The sauce definitely wasn't hot, more sweet and tomato, but it went great with the chopped pork shoulder and even on the french fries. The best part of the meal by far was the two pieces of bread that were put underneath the pork. They layed under there soaking up all that pork grease and barbecue sauce, simply unbelievable.
In case you couldn't tell, I'm really into health food.
Jason said that his po' boy was the best he had ever eaten. He was however, somewhat dissappointed with the sauce. He thought it would be spicier considering the name, but he still liked the taste of it. Surprisingly, he only ate part of one of the chicken wings as they were very greasy and unappetizing.
Swimming somewhere in those fries is a polish sausage.
Although I made some jokes about how dangerous the area around Hot Sauce Williams was, we had absolutely no problems and we were treated very nicely by everyone at the restaurant. The food was excellent, with the large portions making the prices reasonable. Hot Sauce Williams is definitely not a barbecue restaurant, but it is a damn good soul food place.
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