Restaurant Review - Smoq

A couple of weekends ago (the Sunday night before Presidents' Day to be exact) Rob and I decided we wanted to try Eli's bbq. We texted our friends Wall & Suzi to join, and five minutes later they were in our driveway. We headed over there with our byo in hand ready for some bbq....except when we got there...they turned us away....they were out of food! This was ridiculously sad, it smelled like a little piece of heaven in there and now we were all set on eating some good barbeque....so Wall convinced us to head northwest to his favorite bbq joint, Walt's. We rode the (longer than sold to us) ride to Walt's and got out excitedly ready for some food...when we walked in the door the place looked like a tornado had hit it and the waitress said, "hi! just so you know we are out of ribs, chicken, brisket, french fries, etc etc" Down trodden we headed back to the car and immediately fired up our iphones for a bbq search. We found smoq and called them only to find out they were out of ribs and some chicken, but decided to make the trek North to head there anyway...

To make a (very) long story short...here is the review of Smoq...

We were hungry when we left the house so at this point we were REALLY hungry... we ordered drinks and the waiter gave us the long list of all of the things we were out of... I am assuming this is what was going on at other tables too because people were ANGRY... I mean like absolutely LIVID. I heard a lot of attitude being given to the wait staff when they heard what they were sold out of. I heard someone ask for the manager and then after they talked to the table we could actually hear him in the back SCREAMING at someone. I have no idea if he was the owner or manager or what but it was one of the most unprofessional things I have ever experienced. 

The restaurant was not totally like I expected it to look like...kind of one of those things where you can tell a restaurant moved into another restaurant's space without changing too much. 

Anyway, on to the food. First they brought out these cornbread muffins which honestly didn't seem to promising alongside the single serve "whipped spread"....why? why? why not some real butter in a cup...why this fake butter in single serve containers??? But fake butter aside, the cornbread was really moist and tasty..almost like dessert.. it could have had something to do the fact that I was starving at this point, but it was a very good cornbread muffin....

The table had a variety of their barbeque sauces on it including Carolina Hot, Kansas City smoke and Memphis Mild... I am not a huge fan of the fake smoke flavor, so I stuck with the first two. They had nice flavor but were SOOO runny. I am not sure if this is a memphis type of sauce but I love dipping my house made chips in bbq sauce and that was NOT going to happen with this sauce...that wasn't a problem with the sandwiches or brisket though, and the flavors were nice.

I was really in the mood for ribs, but they were out so I ordered the chicken sandwich and was actually pretty impressed! It was juicy and not overcooked and had a nice toasted bun. There was a generous portion of chips that had nice flavor on them also.

Smoq'd chicken, bbq sauce, cheddar and bacon $7.99

 Wall ordered the brisket plate that included a giant pile of brisket and two sides... I can't say too much for these because I didn't taste them, but thought I would share some pictures....

Brisket Plate with Two Sides $14.59

 Rob had the brisket sandwich with mustard slaw...

brisket sandwich topped with mustard slaw $7.99

All in all I was happy with my meal at Smoq... My main issues were the manager that was loudly screaming at someone during our meal and the multiple tables that sat unbussed when we were there. I think the reason everyone was so busy was that none of the restaurants were accounting for the fact that the next day was a holiday...although that must happen every year....so who knows...

Anyway, for us, it won't be worth the drive to head up there specifically to eat here anytime soon, but might be worth a visit if you are up that way!