A chain restaurant spanning 17 states east of the Mississippi, the Smokey Bones in Bowling Green occupies a prominent place near the corner of Campbell Lane and Scottsville Road. People have recommended it to me for years, and it had been suggested to me as a place for barbecue on more than one occasion.

The dining area is reminiscent of Montana Grille or a Logan’s Steak House, and is a bit more formal than a regular BBQ “joint,” but I decided to add it to the tour.

I began, as they say, at the beginning – with appetizers. The Fire Stix plate is a pile of fries smothered in liquid cheese and spicy mayonnaise, with bacon bits, green onion and tomatoes. A barbecue sauce topped it all off. The combination of wet sauces was certainly interesting but couldn’t overcome the somewhat limp fries. The Smoke Rings are large-ish onion rings coated in a beer batter. While good (and I love onion rings), I didn’t find anything outstanding here. I could easily munch on these for a while, but at $7 for seven or eight rings, I wasn’t overly impressed. The Flippin’ Fingers are a standard chicken finger in a light, peppery breading. These were fine, and the child in our crowd downed these as a main dish in rapid form.

One item that truly impressed me was the Wings of Wonder. Smokey Bones cooks these twice, and the key to the great flavor seems to be the initial dry rub and smoking, which gives the wings a more intense flavor than others around town. The subsequent deep-frying crisps them up. They are also huge – monstrous compared to most places. The order of eight could serve as a meal for some people. I had mine with both the Jamaican jerk and Memphis-style barbecue sauces.

It’s easy for a kitchen to create a tomato-based sauce by simply combining ketchup, brown sugar and some Worcestershire sauce. That doesn’t seem to be the case at Smokey Bones. The Memphis sauce had a nice sweetness to it that was supported by both a tangy background and a little bit of bite. It was complex in its flavoring, with no single part of the sauce dominating any other.

The Jamaican jerk barbecue rub is equally good, with a balance of dry peppers, allspice and thyme that combine to provide a robust, spicy rub. As done on Smokey Bones’ wings, the flavors are excellent and in no way did they dry out the chicken.

Smokey Bones offers a wide variety of entrees, but I concentrated on the barbecue. The hand-pulled pork shoulder is a decent-sized portion of meat. The extensive smoking had certainly tenderized it, but while I found the meat to be flavorful, it was overly salty and somewhat dry. Some kind of a side sauce might have gone a long way toward rescuing this dish.

Beef brisket can be a tough cut of meat. Smokey Bones gets around this with an extended marinade followed by some time in the smoker. The brisket is then cut thin on an angle and bathed in a light sauce. The result is certainly a tender piece of meat, but one that was also without a lot of flavor.

As I’ve said before in this column, cooking any kind of fowl is a tricky proposition. If not done well, it’s easy to dry the meat out. The 1/4 chicken and the sliced smoked turkey breast provide two opposing examples of this. The turkey breast was somewhat dry, a bit salty and without a lot of flavor. It either spent too much time in the smoker or needed to have some kind of basting done to keep the meat tender. Smokey Bones prepares its turkey breasts with dry spices, whereas others begin with a pre-smoke brine, which helps preserve the moisture.

The chicken, on the other hand, was excellent. The skin was crisp and tasty, while the interior was still moist. The honey-based sauce complemented the flavors of the chicken, resulting in a light, tasty dish.

A note about the kids’ menu – the portion of the macaroni and cheese was tiny for the $4.49 it cost. Mac and cheese isn’t all that expensive to produce – and keeping a kid happy is the key to any family dining experience. Smokey Bones would do well to either drop the price or increase the portion size. We ordered a second dish for the kids.

I must say that overall I wasn’t all that impressed. While the food was OK, nothing leapt out as really good, especially for the price. I might be back to try some of the other main course meals, and while I might return to pass some time during happy hour eating wings, as far as a stop on the Tour d’BBQ goes, mark this down as a “not recommended.”

— Our anonymous food reviewer gives new restaurants a six-week grace period before reviewing. To comment, contact Managing Editor Mike Alexieff at 783-3235 or via e-mail at malexieff@bgdailynews.com.