Here’s a place that, while purposefully nostalgic, doesn’t feel purposefully nostalgic — like the ’60s and ’70s-era appeal isn’t so exaggeratedly Brady Bunch or Get Smart that it has you rolling your eyes like Skipper from Gilligan’s Island. It’s what I immediately liked about Smoke & Donuts, the food-truck-turned-barbecue-joint by Culinary Institute of America grad Ian Russell and his wife, Juliana Peña.
I mean I knew I’d like the food, having gone gaga for their brisket and cake donuts when they contributed to the smoke billowing out of the short-lived Belicoso Cigars & Café in Mills Park in early 2020, but I didn’t expect to take to the interior as much as I did. The orb pendant lights I first glimpsed through the windows beneath the A-frame awning from the parking lot immerse the space in a Technicolor patina, while the worn and weathered floor spoke to me like a cranky, abrasive Archie Bunker.
At the bar to my left, a couple of ladies sitting on metal barstools seemed to be enjoying their cocktails as a bell-bottomed Bob Barker beamed from the boob tube in a throwback episode of The Price Is Right, superscope microphone and all. So come on down we did, to where Russell’s mom took our order, but not before we gawked at the display case of donuts. “Which one do you have your eye on?” she asked. “All of them,” I said, though I’d already made up my mind on the Salty Englishman and Mango Tajin.
I decided to order the donuts after our meal, but that didn’t preclude me from getting the donut and brisket slider ($5.99), which I’m sure gave me a heart murmur. This gorgeous beast of a sweet and beefy pastry had chopped brisket between a glazed vanilla donut, but gimmicky it’s not. In fact, this main and dessert rolled into one would make a fine and filling lunch. Or dinner. Or breakfast.
Then again, so would the barbecue boards harboring a third of a pound of meat, two sides (or glazed donuts), cornbread, pickles and onions. We opted for the pit sampler ($17.99) which got us three meats of our choosing: sliced brisket (USDA Prime Black Angus brisket, that is), pulled pork and a quarter rack of St. Louis-style ribs. The brisket is stellar, maybe even my favorite in town; the garlic and apple cider jus in the pulled pork kept it, if you’ll allow me to use the most hated word in the English language, moist; and ribs are made lusciously spicy with toasted guajillo peppers and a brown sugar slather. We enjoyed it with sides of ridiculous corn fritters slicked with hot honey, superb baked beans cooked with sorghum, Baby Cakes Stout, KC Sauce and caramelized onions, and chipotle and garlic mac & cheese (that mac was a bit overcooked).
It was all very gratifying, as were stiff cocktails like the smoked Old-Fashioned ($12) garnished with candied bacon (of course) and the Arnold Palmer ($10) spiked with Rough Rider Bourbon and chamomile liqueur. The latter was enjoyed with a smoked turkey Reuben ($10.99) punched up with Lowcountry mustard barbecue sauce served on pressed Olde Hearth rye bread.
But where there’s smoke, there’s donuts — and the Salty Englishman (with Maker’s Mark Bourbon, maple glaze, crunchy bits of Heath Bar and sea salt) gave my constitution a proper bollocking. Even with elevated blood sugar levels, I managed to take one bite of the Mango Tajin and wanted to indulge further in the donut’s spiced compote but couldn’t quite.
Indeed, sugar is everywhere at Smoke & Donuts — there’s even eye candy in the decor and brain candy on the half-wall in the form of a cryptogram-like puzzle that we couldn’t solve. There’ll be other opportunities, I’m sure, but we needed to get up and walk some of this off. On our way out, I saw Bob Barker presiding over the Showcase Showdown, which reminds me — help control the pet population, have your pets spayed or neutered.
Smoke and Donuts
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This article appears in Jul 19-25, 2023.
