Smoke Signals
2489 Main StreetI spent a pretty good chunk of our Wednesday in Lake Placid back in the hotel.
Wednesday was the day most of L’s skates happened at the Lake Placid Ice Dance Championships at The Olympic Center. She was done by about 2 PM. She medaled in both of her events so I stuck around the arena to see her get her medals then I asked J if I could go back to the hotel and take a nap.
The kids and J (and to be honest, me too) wanted to stick around and watch the Junior International Free Dance and Senior International Rhythm Dances. I was bummed because I was really curious to see how the Rhythm and Waltz was going to work this year but I know I’ll get many chances to see it over the next few months.
I took about a three hour nap and at about the time I woke up, I got a text messages from J asking if I’d come pick her and B up. They had watched the Senior rhythm and were ready to call it a night. The hotel was only a few minutes from The Olympic Center so I put on shoes and went and picked them.
We got back to the hotel and started talking about dinner. Neither of us really wanted to go sit down anywhere but we were both kind of hungry.
The thing we noticed, that neither of us realized, is that northern New York seems to be a hot bed for BBQ. There were several places in Lake Placid and several places we passed on the way from Watertown to Lake Placid that had BBQ. We decided to pick one that had online ordering then I was going to head out to grab it.
We picked Smoke Signals in kind of the middle of downtown Lake Placid on Main Street just north of Marcy Road. The restaurant is a two story building that kind of looks like an Alpine Lodge. The space used to be Alpine Mall with shops and smaller restaurants right on Mirror Lake. At some point before 2014, Smoke Signals took over the space but kept the Lodge motif on the exterior.
We sat in our hotel room just up the road and looked over the menu online. J noticed there was online ordering through the website so she ordered that way. There was also a DoorDash link but ordering through the website had more options and actually had an option that she wanted that DoorDash didn’t. J put in the order then I headed downtown to pick it up. It happened to be raining that night which actually made things easier on me. There weren’t nearly as many people downtown and finding a parking spot turned out to be much easier. There’s a municipal lot across the street and I easily found a spot there.
The restaurant still kind of has a lodge feel to it. The wood floors and wood accents on brick walls make for kind of a dark space. Light comes from hanging lamps over each table and some small can lights around the perimeter. The dining room leads to a large patio space outside that looks over Mirror Lake. That probably lets in light on sunny days but it was later in the evening and it was raining so there wasn’t much light coming from that direction.
There is a bar right inside the door. It’s not very big but it’s perfect place to sit and eat if I had been dining alone. The bar was pretty full on this night but there were a few open spots on one end.
Our order was ready when I got there so I grabbed the large brown paper bag. I should have looked inside though because they didn’t put any silverware or napkins in the bag. We had a roll of paper towels in the car but we couldn’t find any forks. That makes BBQ a little hard to eat.
The hardest thing to eat without a fork was something J was really looking forward to. She ordered a side of the Boursin and Bacon Mac. This delicious mac and cheese is made with boursin cheese with a crumble of bread crumbs and crispy bacon on top. J ended up finding a coffee stirrer in the room and poked at the individual noodles as a way to eat. Would have been much easier if we had a fork but she made do and it was a really, really good mac and cheese.
J also ordered the Pulled Pork Sandwich as an entree. This sandwich is pilled high with smoked, tender pulled pork, coleslaw and crispy onions on a brioche bun. A fork would have helped quite a bit here too because there was so much meat on the sandwich there was no way for the bread to contain it. A lot fell off. The flavor was really good though. It had kind of a thin, Caroline style BBQ sauce on the pork. She said it was delicious but it was way too big of a sandwich for her to finish and was kind of a mess. The sandwich came with some battered fries but she said they were way too salty. Without any ketchup or….even better, BBQ sauce to dip them in, they were too salty to really enjoy.
I ordered the Chopped Brisket Sandwich. I typically prefer sliced over chopped brisket but this wasn’t bad. Like the pulled pork sandwich, the brioche bun worked hard to contain the amount of brisket that was stuffed between it. The sandwich was topped off with a slice of Swiss cheese and came with some of the House BBQ sauce. This monster of a sandwich was quite tasty but, again, I really needed a fork to clean up some of the meat that fell off. I’m not above using my hands…and I did..but a fork would have helped quite a bit. My sandwich also came with fries and they didn’t seem to be as salty as J’s. They were still pretty salty and could have used something (BBQ sauce preferably) to dip them in but I finished off the box. I was hungry and they were filling.
Smoke Signals was a little hit and miss. I thought all of the BBQ had fantastic flavor. The fries missed the mark just because they were too salty. The lack of silverware was really a hinderance to enjoying the meal. I’ll take partial blame for that for not looking in the bag before leaving the restaurant and asking. We typically try to be prepared for such situations with paper plates and napkins always in the car but we didn’t have any plasticware so we just had to make do.
I guess I never realized that Upstate New York was such a BBQ area. We had to get at least one BBQ meal before leaving town so we accomplished that and we were both pretty stuffed. We still had to run out and pick L up as she was hanging out with friends plus we had to get B is ice cream for dinner meal as that seemed to be all he ate that week..but we’ll get to that.
SW Michigan Dining 