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Urban Bar-B-Que Company - Owners David Calkins and Lee Howard Now In Numerous Baltimore-Washington Locations


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Had lunch at the Rockville location a couple times in the past 6 months. The pulled pork was excellent the first time, needing no adornment. It was on the dry side the second time, so applied a little of the Carolina-style BBQ sauce. As darkstar995 mentioned up thread, the collards are excellent -- balanced flavors and served with just the right amount of pot likker  ("likkuh").

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Do you want to hear something amazing? Urban Bar-B-Que Company now has *9* locations if you include BWI; 8 if you don't. They have really grown, and stealthily, too - I was going to distribute each individual location into the DC, MD, and VA neighborhood guides, but not after I saw this - they are a *chain*, and leaving them in Multiple Locations is all I have time to do - I wish them well.

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Expansion has done them no favors, competition from places like DCity have pushed them off the top, and you still have to take care to order what's not been sitting in the steam tables for an hour.

But it's still usually pretty darned good, and I'm happy to have them only 10 minutes from my house rather than driving downtown for DCity.

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About a year since the last post....

Pretty good half-rack of ribs at the Rockville location tonight. The cole slaw and collard greens sides were even better than the ribs.

If they served alcohol, it would be a guaranteed return visit.

I should note that Gilly's Craft Beer and Fine Wine is next door....I don't know if it's allowed, but bringing in a bottle and enjoying the Urban BBQ fare might be the trick.

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15 hours ago, Kibbee Nayee said:

I should note that Gilly's Craft Beer and Fine Wine is next door....I don't know if it's allowed, but bringing in a bottle and enjoying the Urban BBQ fare might be the trick.

You used to be able to bring UBQ over to the Gilly's side -- but I bet that policy has changed now that Gilly's is a more full-service bar and deli. 

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4 hours ago, Kev29 said:

You used to be able to bring UBQ over to the Gilly's side -- but I bet that policy has changed now that Gilly's is a more full-service bar and deli. 

Gilly's is quite tight as far as space is concerned, although UBQ is not spacious by any means. The problem with Gilly's is, as you mention, they serve food, and also, they have annoying events like Trivia Night....

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22 minutes ago, DonRocks said:

I'm assuming you mean immediate DC area - for a long time, DC was surrounded by North (Chubby's (the weakest of the four)), West (The Pit Stop), South (Johnny Boy's) and East (KBQ). Granted, that was probably on the far side of five years, but not *that* far.

Urban impressed me on my very first visit, though I'm not entirely sure why - I might have gotten a pulled pork sandwich or something - everything after that was just heavy-handed and glunky (aren't they the place with the "Redneck Nachos?") - Willard's has always been much better, and is still a perfectly decent place to go.

I think there was a window when there was only one store, if you got to Urban at the right time (i.e., when things had just come out of the smoker), it was pretty awesome stuff. It was probably closer to 10 years ago, and I know someone (maybe Tim when he was still at City Paper?) wrote a story about the quality they were putting out.

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18 hours ago, DonRocks said:

Urban impressed me on my very first visit, though I'm not entirely sure why - I might have gotten a pulled pork sandwich or something - everything after that was just heavy-handed and glunky (aren't they the place with the "Redneck Nachos?") 

They had something called soul rolls - barbeque and cheese eggrolls. I'm not sure I'm proud of remembering that. Also, now I want some.

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2 hours ago, porcupine said:

They had something called soul rolls - barbeque and cheese eggrolls. I'm not sure I'm proud of remembering that. Also, now I want some.

Have, not had. Still on the menu. And you can get them with "redneck fondue" for dipping - their pretty good chili mixed with cheese and scallions.

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On 2/10/2020 at 2:17 PM, cheezepowder said:

The Hillandale location has closed.

This location was my only exposure to their product, and I found it boring and flavorless.  One of my coworkers really liked it so I just stopped going to lunch with them unless location was known in advance.  So this is good news for me.

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2 hours ago, jandres374 said:

The original location in Rockville has closed. We used to frequent often when they first opened and even had them cater a party for us. As others have mentioned quality dropped as competition increased.
https://www.mocoshow.com/blog/the-original-urban-bar-b-que-has-closed-chapman-ave-in-rockville/

Agree completely - I work in the building across the street and almost never ate here because it simply wasn't good enough.  The owners were often there, though, and were still quite friendly.  I wanted to like it (and did like them) more than I did.

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