Sweet Lumpy's BBQ

Sweet Lumpy's BBQ

28464 Old Town Front St., Ste. A

Temecula CA 92590

Some friends and I planned to meet up and have some barbecue for lunch before going wine tasting in Temecula. When we showed up, however, the entire Old Town was blocked off to traffic and thousands of people were walking around. We did not know it beforehand, but the "Temecula Rod Run" was going on. Hundreds of cars lined every street in Old Town. We parked and started walking down to the restaurant. There were some absolutely beautiful cars there. Vintage Porsches, hot rods, entire parking lots full of Corvettes. I will add a couple pictures of my favorite cars at the end of the post.

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When we got to the restaurant we saw that their regular menu was not being served and instead they were serving a "special events menu." This disappointed me, as I figured the quality would have to suffer with such a large amount of food they were bound to be serving. Three of us (including me) ordered the pulled pork sandwich, two ordered the brisket sandwiches, and one ordered the tri-tip sandwich.

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The first two food pictures are the brisket sandwich. I tried a bite of my friend's, and the brisket was very tender and moist. Unfortunately, it had the strongest smoke flavor of any piece of barbecue that I have ever tasted. I imagine that in their desire to cook brisket for hundreds - if not thousands - of orders, someone put too much wood in the smoker. I would love to try this sandwich on a normal day of business, though, because it was still quite good.

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My pulled pork sandwich (the next two pictures) was great. The pork was tender, there was hardly any fat, and it did not have the overpowering smoke flavor of the brisket. They have two sauces at Sweet Lumpy's, a sweet and a spicy. The sweet was much too sweet, but the spicy was good: full of slow-building pepper heat. I mixed some of it with French's mustard and put it on the sandwich.

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The last picture is a friend's tri tip sandwich. I did not try this one (I didn't know her well enough to ask for a bite, although I certainly did not hesitate to take a picture of her lunch) but it looked good, and she enjoyed it. I was very impressed that Sweet Lumpy's could make such high quality barbecue on such a busy day. Their fries were crisp, the slaw was fresh, and, other than the overly-smoky brisket, all the meat was delicious. I can't wait to go there again and try their regular menu.

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After lunch we spent a while wandering around looking at the cars. We agreed that if we didn't have wine tasting plans, we would have loved to spend a few hours looking at the cars, listening to the bands, and, probably, stopping by a couple of the barbecue stands to eat some more 'que.

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