The Deviled Pig opened within the past few months at 3307 S Dale Mabry Hwy, Tampa, FL 33629. I was getting good comments on a neighborhood message, and over 4.5 stars on Yelp. It does turn out it didn’t rate quite that high once Yelp realized that there were a sizeable number of recently created accounts that one review giving the location 5 stars (guess who that restaurant was). However, once that was cleaned out, it still had decent reviews, so we decided to try it last night (Friday) early.
We also went when it was the Smoke Shack I think, and the people looked familiar from the previous place, which shut down, as it should have.
Things are improved now, but it’s nothing to get so excited as some others seemed to be. I got brisket and smoked turkey with coleslaw and the regular Mac and Cheese. Lay got brisket and sausage with fries and mashed potatoes. My brisket was moist, but oddly, Lay’s was rather dry. His slices were not as wide either, so his came either off the other end of the brisket from mine or a different brisket. While it had a smoke ring, I didn’t get a lot of smoke flavor from the meat. His sausage was OK, but there was something just a tad odd about the texture…not terrible, and the flavor was good. My smoked turkey was OK. Not bad, but not special either. The mac and cheese was standard fare, and I suspect they are using a commercially supplied coleslaw. We both liked the mashed potatoes and fries. Overall the food was somewhat lukewarm when delivered.
Key to BBQ is the sauce. We opted for their Sweet and their Spicy. It was kind of hard to tell which was which, and instead of a nice big squeeze bottle, it comes in the small little containers. I thought both versions were oversweet and lacked much in the way of a barbecue flavor.
The place was clean, the staff was very nice, and the service was quick. We got there about 5:15, so we ate in. It is mostly a take-out place. We had the special platter which was two meets and two sides. I think drinks were extra. While it was plenty of food, and we both left full, it just wasn’t worth $35. We will likely go back, but in my opinion, it is not a five-star place.
