Lambert’s is one of those places that serves cornbread before the meal. They are served as little mini-muffin size with real butter. They are a jalapeno based cornbread with pieces of real corn in them. They are quite tasty. The only problem is that they are served cold. The butter doesn’t melt, and a lot the goodness is lost in my opinion.

On the main attraction though. I’ve been to Lambert’s several times before, but this is the first time that I’ve actually ordered something other than the traditional brisket and pulled pork plate I always lean towards. The plate was called the BBQ Beef Chopped Brisket Sandwich. Sounds like a tasty mouthful. The bun was I believe your standard fare sesame seed bun, but they went to the effort of toasting it, which was a nice surprise. There was a pretty sizable quantity of meat on the sandwich as well. It was an $8 sandwich, the cheapest thing on the menu if I recall correctly. But that’s what I wanted. The meats wasn’t overly saucy, and it was a fairly large cut chopped brisket. Not the fine ground stuff a lot of places server. This was real sliced brisket that had been chopped. It was topped off with a bit of finely chopped relish.

The sandwich had a great flavor and great consistency. There was one piece in the sandwich that wasn’t cut enough to get in one bite and ended up on the plate. Lambert’s has a hot sauce on every table that is quite tasty, it’s a little more vinegar based than the regular sauce but is still a thick sauce. If you want add a bit of spice to your meat I would highly recommend it, it’s not going to “burn” you, but it just adds a little something extra. So I put a generous helping of it on the meat and applied the top half of the bun. I do like to add some regular sauce to pretty much each bite. Lambert’s sauce is well done. Not too sweet, not vinegary, and not to peppery.

If you like Mac and Cheese order it, it’s for you. There is plenty of melted cheese in the dish, and a nice crusted American cheese layer on top. I almost felt that it was too cheesy if there can be such a thing. I think a bit of gratin would have been nice, but it stands up well on it’s own.

The only draw back to coming here at lunch is the price. Today’s adventure was reasonably affordable for downtown, but if I order what I normally do it would have been well over $20. As it was with tip and everything it was about $14. I thought it was a pretty good value based quality and quantity of food that I got. I definitely recommend it to people, but beware that you will be paying downtown prices for BBQ. It’s well executed, and quite tasty.