Smoque BBQ
3800 N. Pulaski RoadAnd now I’m off to Chicago.
If you’ve followed this blog at all for the last 17 years, you already know that I have a tradition with my dad, brother, and an elementary/middle school friend. We go to a White Sox game every year.
We started this tradition in 2009 when I got married. I didn’t want to do a traditional bachelor party. I wanted to go to a baseball game. The tradition stuck and last year was the only year we’ve missed…but we made up for it with a Bears game instead.
Back in 2009, I found a wing place on the south side that fed us during a tailgate parking lot. We’ve always tried to do wings for our tailgates but that place moved a couple of times and we had to refind it. We also put a couple of other places in there to either try something new or because we couldn’t figure out if Wings Around the World was still open.
This year my brother asked if we could do BBQ instead. My dad doesn’t love BBQ so I offered to do both. I’d get the BBQ my brother wanted and find a wing place nearby so we would still have wings.
My brother really wanted to try the BBQ from Smoque BBQ on the corner of North Pulaski Road and Grace Street in the Old Irving Park Neighborhood on Chicago’s North side. The very popular restaurant is actually part of a larger building with most of the space belonging to City Smiles dentistry. Parking is a little tough in the area. There is street parking if you can find it. I did carry-out though and there is a 15 minute loading zone along Grace Street so that helps. If you’re dining in, expect to spend a little bit of time looking for a place to park.
I put an order in using their website as I was hitting the Dan Ryan Expressway. The website was giving me about a 40 minute timeframe and my GPS was giving me about the same. My brother wanted baby back ribs and brisket. I put in an order for one slab of ribs and a half pound of brisket. The cost was a little over $50.
The instructions in the online order confirmation where a little confusing. It said to park on Grace Street in the pick up lane. I didn’t see anything obvious at the time but assumed it meant the 15 minute loading zone. I saw a pick up window outside but I headed inside anyway to see if I could find a bathroom before picking up my food. It had been a long ride from Kalamazoo.
J and I actually ate at Smoque many, many years ago before we moved to Michigan. It was featured on a Season 2 episode of Diner’s Drive-ins and Dives. They were featured again in 2018 for their St. Louis style ribs. It was really good but it was also at the height Triple D so wait times were really long and they had a hard time keeping up. We hadn’t actually thought about the place in years. I have no idea how my brother heard about it or what piqued his interest but here I am again almost 20 years after we ate there for the first time in 2007.
I have almost no recollection of that visit in 2007 so I don’t have any memory of what the restaurant looked like then. Today, there’s an order counter right as you walk in the door. To my surprise, there wasn’t much of a line but the restaurant was busy. I could see to-go orders being packaged up at a different counter that looks like it may have been the order counter at one point in the history of this building.
The dining room was pretty full but there were a couple of open tables. It’s almost a communal dining situation as the tables are all pushed pretty close together. The menu board for the restaurant is on the far opposite wall from the entrance. There’s not much in the way of ambiance because there isn’t much room. There are some pictures and accolades around the menu board but that’s about it. The ceiling is left exposed giving it a somewhat industrial look. There are a few single bulb lamps hanging from a grid but most of the light comes from the large windows that look at Pulaski Road.
It was a little hot on this particular Saturday afternoon and there was still space at tables inside but there is also an outdoor patio on the Gracie Street side of the building. It’s another option for those really busy times.
I couldn’t find a restroom so I just left and went outside to pick up my order. There is a small drive thru type window near the entrance to the building. I just walked up there, told them my name and they passed out a paper bag with my food.
I still had to make another stop. It was about 2:00 and gates to the ballpark didn’t open until 3:00. It would take me all of that time to get to a wing places, order, get my food, and drive through downtown Chicago to get back to Rate Field.
When I got to the ballpark just before 3:00 PM, the gates were already open so I went in and got parked. I still needed to wait for the rest of the crew to get there. They finally rolled in around 3:30 PM. I found where they parked and headed over with the food.
My brother couldn’t wait to get in to the baby back ribs. These things were so tender. It’s not quite fall off the bone which is actually how you want ribs. You want a little bit of push back on them. They had an incredible smokey flavor and a bark that was full of flavor but not burnt. The ribs were cut in to two half slabs and came with BBQ sauce but I don’t think anyone actually used the sauce. My brother ate most of the rack but he was the one that really wanted it so we left most of it to him. I had a couple of bones just so I could try them. They were really good ribs and I probably could have packed down a whole rack by myself.
We also got a half pound of brisket total but I didn’t know what kind everyone liked so I split it up. You can order either sliced or chopped. If you pick sliced, you have the choice between juicy/fatty and lean. I like both so I did a quarter pound of each to get us to our half pound.
The juicy/fatty part comes from the point. The quarter pound is only four slices and it costs $10. Brisket is expensive, man. Expensive but incredibly delicious. We all grabbed a slice and kind of split it in half. The smoke penetrated all the way through the meat which had a delicious salt and pepper crust on it. Again, it came with BBQ sauce but I don’t think anyone used it. My dad actually brought buns to make sandwiches but no one wanted to do that either. This stuff was just so good on it’s own. I know we all wished there was more but $40/ lb. was a lot to be spending for a tailgate when we had a lot of other food as well. If we had only done BBQ, I probably would have spent the money.
The other quarter pound of brisket was from the lean side or the flat. Again, a quarter pound was four slices. It was super delicious as well. It had a really good, thick bark that was just an explosion of flavor. Again we all probably ended up eating one slice by the end but we split up the slices and just kind of snacked on it for a while.
Smoque BBQ was a good addition to our tailgate. I know we all would have liked more brisket but we also had wings so we didn’t order as much BBQ as we would have if it had just been a BBQ tailgate.
It’s a little out of the way for a White Sox game from from Iroquois County or, in my case, Kalamazoo, but I left plenty early to make sure I could get to everything my group wanted. We had delicious BBQ (and wings) and saw a Sox win.
SW Michigan Dining 