Well, 2 months later I've been to most of these places.
Famous Dave's wasn't close to being awful, but it wasn't worth going back to when there's other BBQ in the area. I would buy their BBQ sauce by the pint though.
Kloby's... heartbreaking, the location I went to closed a month after I discovered it. They had two locations, one on the outskirts of Baltimore, the other down in Laurel. I didn't get a chance to try their ribs, but I had both the pulled pork and the brisket. The pulled pork was hands down better than any of the other places I've been to save maybe Hocutt's (back when it was at its West Virginia location), and the style was different anyway. Kloby's does their pork in tips/chunks. There's no hint of vinegar, and the meat is very lightly sauced - if you don't order sauce on the side, most of the meat just tastes like pork and smoke. I also tried their beef brisket twice. They shave it thin like deli meat. The first time was delicious, just the taste of meat and smoke. The second time was awful - there was so much fat in it that I had to take it back because a quarter of the way through the portion I'd discarded more fat than I'd eaten meat. However I chalk this up to either it being decided the location was going to close and phoning it in, going there at an off hour with two girls younger than me (I'm only in my mid 20s) in the kitchen who didn't know what they were doing, or a combination of the two.
The location they closed was in a strip mall. Despite this, they had real BBQ going on there, they had wood inside the dining room - but it was probably fated to close. I held off trying it for nearly a year because I didn't think a BBQ place in a strip mall could be decent. Their other location in Laurel was where their actual smokehouse was, and according to their website,
www.klobysbbq.com, they just added a dining room to it. I'd strongly reccomend it, with the advice that you should ask how lean the brisket is before ordering it.
Andy Nelson's has a very, very heavy hand on the vinegar. I mean, everything has vinegar in it. Pork, greens, baked beans, potato salad, coleslaw. But that isn't to say it isn't good, they put some tasty food on the table. Their pork is minced or shredded, sauced and put on a roll, and you can help yourself to horseradish, raw onions and two different bbq sauces, the carolina mustard sauce, and *sigh* another vinegar based sauce. Even their dry rub counts vinegar solids as an ingredient.
If this sounds negative, well, don't take it like that. I've been to Andy's half a dozen times since first going there and will go back again. The first bite is always esquisite, it's just that by the time I'm done I'm really wishing they had something totally devoid of vinegar on the menu. I usually get some mustard bbq sauce and some horseradish and alternate. A bite plain, a bite with mustard bbq, a bite with horseradish, repeat...
Went to the Big Bad Wolf just yesterday and had beef ribs for the first time in my life. Enjoyed them immensely after I fished all the meat out of the fat they came in. I didn't get the pork but I got to try some - they do the meat in big shreds and chunks. They do vinegar it some, but not as strongly as Andy's does. It's across town from where I live but I fully intend to go back, hopefully before they take the "blueberry rum" BBQ sauce off their menu...
Razorbacks is a different kettle of fish. It's a nice sit down restaurant and it doesn't do BBQ, it does bbq'ed ribs. It's also a bar that seriously knows its mixed drinks - they'll look down their nose at you if you ask for a list, but if you order something knowing what you want it'll come out good. As for the ribs, Razorbacks ribs themselves are good, but its their sauces that make them. Kentucky Bourbon sauce is delicious, a carribean mango sauce taught me that sweet =/= bad when it comes to bbq, and there's a few others I haven't tried, but Razorbacks is pricey.
I can't make it down to southern Maryland to try Johnny Boy's any time soon, but there's a couple things I want to get to down there, including Bear Creek Pit BBQ.
I don't own a digital camera at this time but I'm saving up for one, and I'll provide some pictures once I've got it.
