We Tried Jimmy John’s New Brisket Sandwiches (And We Can’t Figure Out Why They’re Seasonal)

Starting in September, Jimmy John’s went ahead and added two all-new sandwiches to their menu in a collaboration with Sweet Baby Ray’s. The two sandwiches featured an all-new meat, brisket, in addition to the specific sauces, and they sound like the ideal sandwiches for barbecue lovers.

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Both the Hickory Brown Sugar BBQ Brisket Sandwich and the Sweet & Spicy BBQ Brisket Sandwich are here for a limited time only to satisfy your cravings, but since we ourselves are dedicated the cause of excellent barbecue flavors, we figured we’d oughta try them out ourselves, too. So without further ado, this is our official Sporked review.

Sweet & Spicy BBQ Brisket Sandwich

This was honestly a far better sandwich than we expected. Something about Jimmy John’s just never really screamed “experts of barbecue” to us, but maybe it’s time for us to rethink that. Okay, well, maybe they’re not fully experts. But with a hearty helping of Sweet Baby Ray’s barbecue sauce, it’s not too difficult to convince me.

Not only is the sauce delicious and a primary driving flavor in this sandwich, but the actual meat itself thoroughly impressed us. It was smoky and seasoned delightfully. And where we usually have an issue with fast food/fast casual attempts at smoked, tender meats like brisket due to the texture being off, Jimmy John’s seemed to have no issue.

What this sandwich really excelled in, though, is balance. The sandwich had onions and pickled peppers on it giving it an edge and a bite that you really need with sweet, thick barbecue sauce. All of the pungent acidity made it so that we actually wanted to finish the whole sandwich, to which we could not say the same for the next sandwich is this collection.

Hickory Brown Sugar BBQ Brisket Sandwich

Okay, okay, perhaps I was being a bit hyperbolic. It’s not that this sandwich was so bad that we wouldn’t eat it. It’s just that this sandwich was pretty far from our number one choice, even just out of the two sandwiches we tried today. Where the other had a balance of sweet, spicy, and vinegar-y flavors, this sandwich read as very flat. The barbecue sauce was overbearing yet not interesting enough, and the brisket itself seemed to be of a poorer quality.

We’ve had better, and where we are struggling to see a good reason for the Sweet & Spicy BBQ Brisket Sandwich to leave the menu due to its success in flavor execution, we see no place for this sandwich to stay on the menu. But if you really prefer a very sweet, classic barbecue flavor with not much else going on, I’d say you’d probably really enjoy this sandwich. But take my advice and ask for the slow-smoked brisket off the other sandwich in place of the Mesquite smoked brisket.