In this YouTube episode, hosts Josh and Rachael Fillbrandt explore Soul Belly BBQ, a barbecue joint located on Brewery Row in the Las Vegas Arts District. They begin by noting the venue’s location, beer‑centric drink menu, happy‑hour hours, and the promise of live music. After ordering a range of local sour pineapple beers, they dive into the food menu, highlighting prices for sandwiches ($18‑$20), starters ($7‑$15), and the $80 Chef’s Choice for two (six meats and six sides). They sample a variety of dishes—pimento cheese starter, watermelon salad with mint, lime, and tajín, house‑made mac & cheese topped with chicharrones, two hot links (beef and Hatch‑green‑chili cheddar), pulled pork, pork belly, brisket, and ribs. Detailed tasting notes cover texture, flavor (smoky, peppery, sweet char, vinegar‑based sauce), and presentation. The hosts praise the service (attentive staff, multiple check‑ins) and the venue’s spacious, clean aesthetic, noting its proximity to two popular breweries. They also discuss chef Bruce Kalman’s background (Top Chef alumnus, Food Network’s Barbecue Brawl). The episode concludes with a banana pudding dessert, a summary of three standout items (pork belly, brisket, hot link), and a recommendation to visit, especially when live music is on. Throughout, they encourage viewers to subscribe, like, and follow on social media.
Chapters
Hey everybody, I'm Josh.
And I'm Rachael.
And we are big fans of barbecue, but we have not done barbecue much here in Las Vegas.
No, we haven't, but we found one in the middle of Brewery Row here in the Arts District, Soul Belly Barbecue.
Let's go. All right, as Rachael said, this is on Brewery Row, so you can guess that there was going to be a lot of beers on the menu, and there is. Thank goodness. Looks like we're ranging from $6 to $10 depending on the beers, so hopefully we can get something good local. And then there's some craft cocktails for $14, cocktails in can $5 to $7, and some other spirits. But I really like the venue. It does look like they have live music I'm guessing that's at night though.
I would assume so. I don't see it today.
Yes.
They do have a happy hour, I noticed too, like Monday through Thursday from 2 to 4. I don't know what that means for pricing, but at least there is an option for happy hour here too.
All right, kicking it off with 2 of our favorite local brews. Both of them are Las Vegas, both of them are pineapple, and both are sour.
Yeah, yeah, so what can go wrong?
Um, but let's go ahead and look at the food. Now they do have specialties. They did say they have Taco Tuesday.
Yeah.
We might have to look at that, but otherwise you can see here's Here's your menu. Sandwiches around $18 to $20. Starters are $7 to $15. You got all the meats over here from the pit. Bunch of sides, looks like 6 or 7 sides.
Yeah.
And they are about $6 to $10. Salad, come on. I'm, I'm kind of interested in looking at this Chef's Choice for 2. It's $80. You get 6 meats, 6 sides. That's a lot.
That seems like a lot.
Yeah, we might have to try it though. And we have 3 seats to put it in. So we have a fridge.
We could take leftovers if we needed to.
That's true. Kicking us off.
Yeah, some chilled pimento cheese. It's— I would really guess it's just sitting in a cooler over there.
Yeah, because it was brought right out.
Ritz crackers. Ritz crackers. And she did say she could bring us more Ritz crackers.
Yeah, I don't know that a lot of times you get pimento cheese made to order.
No.
Nor do I need to.
It's chilled, but it spreads very nicely even chilled. That was a big bite. Very good, creamy, not too spicy. It's a good starter. I really like it. On every table there are 3 3 barbecue sauces.
You can see there's spicy barbecue sauce, Carolina Red. We're assuming that's hot.
I'm only saying that because if you see the inside of the bottle, there is some peppers in there. Yeah, devil, like some seeds in there. Right? Yeah.
And then there's some sweet barbecue sauce too, so you have a little bit of everything.
You also get some Tapatio, Louisiana hot sauce, and some Cholula. This is actually really one of my favorites for added scrambled eggs.
Yeah?
Yeah.
All right, we got a lot of stuff coming.
We do, but I really like the venue. It does remind me of some of the barbecue joints we've been in in Texas and Nashville.
Yeah, so it's a little bit cleaner.
Well, I mean, minor details.
But it's a cool style for sure. All right, we are still waiting on the pork or pulled pork, but you can see we went ahead and asked for some fatty brisket, which looks really good there.
It does look good.
Then we got some pork belly.
Look at the char on the outside of that.
Yeah, it's crazy looking char.
That's crazy.
Um, we did the watermelon salad, which comes with fresh mint, lime juice, and tajín.
I'm hoping it's chilled Unlike the watermelons that we had on the cruise ship.
We did order a half a thing of ribs. We got some mac and cheese because I believe I've heard that they do their noodles in-house. And then I ended up getting 2 links.
I'm not sure why, but yeah, Josh wanted to go for 2 links. I said we only needed one, but it's fine. It also comes with pickles and some white bread.
Yes. And the links— so there's 2 different ones. There's a beef one, and then this one has Hatch green chili and cheese in it.
Yeah, it's a hot link. It's gonna be— Yeah.
So I'm just gonna go ahead and start right there.
Okay.
And the pulled pork is here next to it.
The pulled pork just showed up. This is perfect.
Let's go ahead and look. Look at how cheesy that is.
Oh wow, that's impressive.
Yeah. So I'm just gonna start with that.
While he's doing that, I'm gonna take a bite of the watermelon salad.
Let's try it.
I'm happy to report that watermelon salad is chilled and freaking phenomenal. It's so good.
So I'm gonna show from this side. You look at, look at how cheesy that is. There's so many green peppers or green chilies in there. There's a nice heat to it. It's super moist, nice casing, but not too hard of a bite. I definitely think that that is awesome, and you are not gonna be mad that we got 2 of those.
I'm also excited because coming up in a few weeks, we are going to Albuquerque and we're gonna try Hatch green chilies in Albuquerque. So like, this is kind of a start to get us there. Gotta do that.
Now the mac and cheese, what sets it apart I think, or might set it apart, is there's some chicharrones on top.
Yeah, some crushed chicharrones on there. I'm going to speak already and say we're gonna have the meat sweats when we walk out of this place.
Is there anything wrong with that though?
Especially when you're doing barbecue.
No, this is really good. Definitely, it's got a nice al dente bite, a little bit past al dente, but the crunch is good. The cheese is very creamy. I'm a big fan of it. Let's go ahead and try it.
Good, 'cause sometimes macaroni and cheese It doesn't always hit right.
I know. I'll admit most of the time I'm disappointed with mac and cheese. I'm not today.
Good. What are you gonna try next?
Brisket. Let's try this brisket. So here's a key for you. It's gonna be, can you pull it apart?
And you— this one is just like falling apart.
Yeah.
So that's Josh's piece because he's fingered that piece. Yeah.
So I'm gonna try it without the salsa first.
And let us know in the comments below if you would wear a white shirt to a barbecue place. I chose not to today. I'm a risk taker. And he's a risk taker.
What I love about it is I'm a big fan of like Texas barbecue with heavy pepper.
Pepper.
Lots of pepper on that. The meat is so melt-in-your-mouth, like I barely had to chew.
That's awesome.
And that was a big bite. It's probably too big of a bite, but that was delicious.
I know Josh has already shown the barbecue sauces, but we have not added any barbecue sauces to these. This is how they came out.
All right, here's the tester. So part of the reason why we didn't do the combo is because our waitress let us know that normally, or a lot of times, with the chef's combo, you don't get a And we want ribs. We're like, we want the rib. We're not needing turkey, and I hate mushrooms.
Yeah, we're definitely not going for the portobellos. Oh, that looked like it just peeled right off that bone.
But you can see the nice thing about it is it doesn't fall completely off. It's still got a bite to it. But it pulls immediately. Now I'll probably do a little bit of hot sauce on that, but I think it's really good. It's got a nice texture on top of there. Yeah, I think this is great. I think we'll probably have a couple more beers and eat through all this meat. If you're enjoying this video and looking for more Las Vegas restaurant reviews, be sure to hit that subscribe button. We have almost 200 restaurant reviews in Las Vegas alone.
All right, I'm gonna go with pork belly, right? The pork belly.
This is the pork belly.
Yeah, it has an amazing looking char on the outside of it.
It almost for some reason makes me think of like a Spam wrapped in seaweed.
Yes, and then there's some—it looks to me maybe mustard seed. I don't know. I'd have to look.
I think there is mustard seeds. It looks like.
Oh my God, so tender. Oh, there's a sweetness to that. We're gonna have to see what that is, but there's a sweetness on there that is—
It does not say on the menu.
Okay, so the interesting part to me, and I know a lot of people get this way, is you see black and you immediately think burnt. There's not one flavor of bitterness from burnt. This is true char. Delicious, tender, I used a knife and come on people, I'm really just using a plastic knife. Right. So it's just a fork.
Yeah, you don't even need real silverware for this.
That is so good.
Okay, good.
So good. Next is pulled pork. We love pulled pork. I'm probably gonna end up putting some on that bread over there, but that's gonna be a big old bite too. I can already see it.
Yeah, I think most of the time with pulled pork I want to have it in a sandwich, but we also couldn't overdo the Overdo the bread with this.
There is a vinegar sauce on there. It's pretty strong. What I like so far about these 2 that I've tried is the pork belly is offering a kind of sweetness to that flavor, but the pulled pork has got that sour note, the acidic note with that vinegar base. I would say that's a vinegar-based barbecue sauce on there. Very strong, but it comes out nicely. You can still taste the smoke of the barbecue. And the pork is super tender. Top-notch.
Look at that.
And again, I have already tried the watermelon salad. It's chilled. It has a nice fresh watermelon mint flavor. It's going to be a perfect palate cleanser in between all these meats.
And I'm going to order dessert.
Yeah, we already know Josh is ordering dessert. I might have another beer.
I'll do that too, don't worry. All right, our fridge is going to come in handy, but I gotta get some banana pudding. $6 coming up. Oh, and we got a second beer.
Delicious.
All right, I don't think there's any better way to end a barbecue feast than banana pudding.
I can't believe you have room. We actually are taking leftovers for one of the first times ever in Vegas, and I am so full.
Vanilla wafers, it looks like bananas, uh, looks like there might be a— I don't know, like a nut crumble or candied nut crumble on there.
Nice little parfait looking. Banana pudding there.
Definitely some candied nuts on top of there.
Oh, nice.
Um, very nice, easy flavoring. It's delicious. It goes down well. Don't worry, you're gonna fit this afterwards. It just goes around the meats inside your stomach, so you always have plenty of room. Don't worry.
It's like ice cream, is what you're saying? Okay. Uh, I will say, for one, again, the venue is very big. I would love to come back when they have the live music going. I think that'd be super fun. And the service here has been Stand out. We've had at least 3 people check on us, help us order. No one says, that's not my job, that's not my table. Like, this is a cool place.
And I think the prices seem fairly reasonable for this level of barbecue.
And what you're getting.
I'm pretty happy with it.
I agree. Yeah. Wow.
Holy moly, I'm full.
That was absolutely delicious.
It is. And I will say, part of the reason why we came here is because Bruce Kalman is the chef here. He's been on Top Chef before, where I guess he was at an Italian restaurant when he was there, and he decided to go into barbecue. And he is currently on, I believe it's called Barbecue Brawl on Food Network. It's still in the season right now, and he's still alive, so hopefully he wins it.
One of our friends, we sent a picture and he said, this is what heaven looks like. And I couldn't agree more. I actually posted, I hope heaven has this on their menu. Like, yeah, this was delicious. So great. The service was phenomenal. The selection was fantastic. I swear we had enough for probably 3 or 4 people.
It probably was.
For a really good price.
And I will say, I think there were 3 standouts.
Yes.
Uh, so the pork belly.
Hands down, so good.
The brisket, which was melt-in-your-mouth good.
Pull-apart tender. You did not need even a knife or a fork for that.
Yes.
It was so good.
And I thought that Hatch green chili and cheddar hot link, which I typically do not order sausage because I'm always underwhelmed, but I wasn't this time. It was good, moist, good flavor. I really liked the hot barbecue sauce as well. And then that banana pudding was just a good nice ender. It was not heavy banana, so if you're not a into bananas, you might not notice, but there are some nice sliced bananas inside there.
I agree. And for us, the macaroni and cheese and watermelon salad were perfect sides. They evened everything out and just made everything fit well together. A perfect combination for lunch today.
And very cool venue. If you're ever over in the Arts District and you want to check it out, or just get a car and come over to the Arts District, check it out. And then we're probably gonna go grab a beer next door.
I was gonna say, it's sandwiched between 2 of our favorite breweries here in Vegas, Nevada Brew Works and Huddle. You can't go wrong.
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