Baldy’s Smoked Meats

• 340 Water Street
• Saugatuck, MI 49453
• (269) 455-5949
• Website
• Menu

It seems like a lot of my blog posts lately have been coming from work trips. I have been making more of an effort to try to find someplace new on my travels in the last few months as places are opening back up and more people are going out to eat.

My travels took me to Saugatuck late last week and there’s still a list of places I want to get to from our spring break vacation earlier this year.

The one place I was really kind of sad we didn’t get to was a BBQ joint along the Kalamazoo River. I needed to be in town for my scheduled assignment at 1 PM so I left Kalamazoo around 11 AM thinking I could grab lunch before I headed to where I needed to be.

Baldy’s Smoked Meat is on Water Street at the intersection with Main Street in downtown Saugatuck. The restaurant is in the north end of the Dockside Marketplace near the small parking lot.

I was running a little later than I wanted to be so I stopped in Hamilton to check the website. They have online ordering so while I was sitting at a gas station about 15 minutes away, I put in my order. My hope was this would make my stop a little quicker (spoiler alert, it didn’t.)

I pulled up to the shop at about 12:30. I had to stop for gas and grabbed a Pepsi in Otsego so that made the trip a little longer than I had anticipated. I walked in to find a pretty long line of people for 12:30 on a Friday afternoon.

The restaurant is counter service so you order at the cash register then take a seat in the dining room and the crew of two that were putting orders together work down the line and bring the food to you. There are a couple of pretty good sized dining rooms with a really cool industrial feel to them. There is wood stacked along the entrance so you get the feel of an industrial smoke house.

I figured I had already put my order in so I went to the area of the coutner that said “Pick up.” There was employee right in front of me putting orders together and a to-go bag sitting right next to her. She looked at me…twice, continued what she was doing, then walked away with food in her hands to go deliver to people who had ordered. All she had to do was hand my bag over the counter. It was already paid for. That didn’t happen and I’m not a person who is going to make a scene in a restaurant so I just got in line for the cashier and waited patiently while the people in front of me asked about every single item on the menu before ordering.

I got to the front of the line and told the cashier I had a to-go. He went to the end of the line where I was previously standing, grabbed the bag and handed it to me.

I went outside to eat. I was kind of in a hurry so I was just going to sample a few things before getting to where I needed to be a few minutes away.

I ordered the Two Meat Combo meal (brisket and burnt ends) with mac & chees and elote corn as my sides. The first thing I noticed was how heavy the box was. BBQ places aren’t always known for piling on the food but this place sure did.

I started with the brisket first because brisket is my favorite. This brisket was super tender, super juicy, and had a great salt and pepper flavor on the crust. There were two large slices of meat in my order that just kind of melted in my mouth. I got the mop sauce just in case but there was no need. This meat was delicious on it’s own.

I was running out of time but I decided to bite in to a couple of the burnt ends before packing the rest up for later. Just like the brisket, these burnt ends were super tender and felt like biting through a tasty stick of butter. The sauce on these ends was burnt on to it and slightly sticky. Each hunk of meat was pretty large so for a combo plate, there was A LOT of meat.

I had to wait a little on the sides since I had a job to get to but I got back to them as soon as I could. The mac & cheese was really cheesy. In addition to the cheese in the dish, there was a thick layer of carmelized cheddar on top of the pile.

I picked the Elote Corn because it sounded interested. There’s really not a description on the website or the menu but the best was I can describe it a seasoned roasted cream corn. I thought when I ordered it was going to be more of a traditional Mexican Street Corn on the Cob but it’s more of a cream corn grilled and seasoned like Elote corn. It’s not bad but not really my thing.

My meal cost me a little over $17 before and, like I mentioned earlier, there was a lot of food here.

The BBQ from Baldy’s Smoked Meat is delicious. I always walk in to BBQ place skeptical so that makes me really happy when I’m blown away. Both of the meats I had were tender and delicious. My only complaint was about the wait to get my to-go order…but food wise, I have nothing to complain about.