Rubes Creek Rube Restaurant Reviews

• 2900 Canton Road, Marietta, GA 30066
• Last Inspection Score: 99, June 2025

I’ve eaten food from Smitty’s Lockdown BBQ throughout the years, but have never actually stopped at the restaurant before. I encountered their food first via a food truck that used to visit the office building where I used to work in the Cumberland area of Cobb. I also ordered them via delivery during the pandemic as a tasty respite from my home cooking, which usually consists of throwing things in a microwave or slapping meat and cheese on a sandwich.

I pass by this restaurant on the way to and from work. On one of my off days a couple of weeks ago, on a cold, cloudy day, I finally stopped in.

I felt like I needed a little meaty treat, feeling exhausted and having gotten over a bad cold after a very busy January that prevented me from working on this blog as much as I’d like!

The restaurant is located off of Canton Road in the same shopping center as Book Exchange and Big Lots, kind of an older area. The building sits closer to the road than the main shopping center. Probably it was a bank at some point, repurposed into a BBQ joint to apparently great success.

Its exterior is painted in a fresh and homespun way on the theme of law enforcement and pigs, but the pigs included in the artwork aren’t exclusively members of law enforcement (one is included in a robber’s mask), a nice way of defusing that particular dated insult for police, which probably no one younger than 50 remembers.

It’s just fun artwork, a more urban feel that the typical decorating style of many barbecue places. Humanizing the critters you’re about to eat has a long Southern tradition, from what I can tell, from all the barbecue restaurants I’ve been to with cute piggies with curly tails gracing the places where people go to eat charred pork. What’s up with that?

Anyway, the restaurant’s interior includes a sort of jail cell with bars, perhaps where the safe deposit boxes used to be, and that is where I sat. It’s very cavey and isolated, dark with gray walls and silver accents.

And even if you sit elsewhere in the restaurant, there’s not a lot of light because of few windows. They do have a patio area for those who want more sunlight with their meal. Honestly, it seems most were there to take their food and run. Why not stay and bask in the heady barbecue odor?

The service was prompt and friendly, with the order out in a reasonable amount of time and brought to my jail cell. I ordered a pulled pork sandwich and fried okra, and ordered for the Young Adult Son a takeout order of chopped chicken with mac and cheese.

The fried okra was cooked perfectly, the right level of doneness, not too mushy and not too crunchy. It may have been a little bit too salty, but still it was a tasty treat. When I cook okra at home, I never go through the trouble of breading. So it was a nice change of pace.

The pulled pork was also well-cooked and yummy. Each table includes three different barbecue sauces, one spicy, one sweet and one more mustardy. I liked and used all three, dipping the end of the sandwich into a puddle of sauce.

They have sauces for sale, and you can even refill your bottle.

One unfortunate side effect: I had plans before I stopped at Lockdown, but because I got too full on good, heavy food, I didn’t have the energy to see them through.

As far as the Young Adult Son’s chopped chicken, he said it was meh. He said he would’ve preferred a pulled pork sandwich instead. Oh well. You snooze, you lose!

In addition to pulled pork and chicken, they have wings, ribs, and a variety of premium sides, including corn nuggets (a Young Adult Son favorite).

I tend to stick with pulled pork sandwiches when I go to barbecue joints because ribs are so messy and I feel like a Neanderthal gnawing on bones in public.

Smitty’s Lockdown BBQ is a definite winner. Don’t pass it up!

So, my friends, I’m going to try to do a restaurant review a week, depending on my work schedule. I may not be setting the world on fire with my niche interests, but whatever. To hell with it, I’m having fun.