SMOKESTAK

Grown-up barbecue, wood-smoked meat and cocktails | Shoreditch, London | 'Smoking hot street food finds a home' - Evening Standard ****

SMOKESTAK | london barbecue

https://smokestak.co.uk

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GourmetGorro: Smokestak, Shoreditch, London restaurant review

Review analysis
food   desserts  

We ordered a load of food to share and there wasn’t a single bum note.

The first rate toasted bun was filled with tender, smokey, fatty brisket balanced with fiery pickled red chillies.

A soft, molasses rich sticky toffee pudding (£6.50) was joined by smooth burnt butter ice cream.

The delicate burnt taste of the ice cream intensified the flavour of the whole pud.

Toasted oak ice cream (£4.50) was a bit weird but still a success.

Review: Smokestak | Londonist

Review analysis
food  

This newly opened BBQ restaurant near Shoreditch High Street began as a street food stall at Dinerama, quickly gaining attention for their knockout ribs and brisket — arguably the best in London.

There's a lot of bad BBQ in London; a lot of cotton-woollen pulled pork that comes overcooked and sopping with unbalanced BBQ sauce.

London is in dire need of a break from slow-cooked pork shoulder.

Those who've visited their stall will be familiar with spectacular brisket, which is some of the best we've had anywhere in the world, let alone London.

Eat the brisket bun first, then the sticky toffee pudding with brown butter ice cream, for it is the best sticky toffee pudding in London.

Restaurant review: Smokestak, Shoreditch | Foodism

Review analysis
food   drinks  

You've tried Smokestak's brand of US-influenced, slow-cooked pork and beef at Street Feast events – now, it's finally moved into a full-time home in Shoreditch, expanding its menu to include cocktails, starters, desserts and even fish and veg, too.

Head to the downstairs bar for a whisky cocktail – we loved an old fashioned infused with lip-smacking peach.

You could stick to these all night, or there's a wine list that focuses on wines from the US and South America.

The menu doesn't try to reinvent the wheel – slow-cooked beef is coated in sweet and tangy marinade; lightly cured and hot-smoked salmon is served with hung yoghurt with dill and horseradish; beetroot comes with goat's curd and hazelnuts.

We're living in a post-Smokestak world now, and US BBQ joints in the capital have a new benchmark.

Smokestak, London: Restaurant Review - olive magazine

Review analysis
food   desserts   staff   drinks  

Since then Barbadian David, who previously worked front of house at Gordon Ramsay at Claridge’s, The Savoy Grill and Roka, has grown a reputation in London and beyond (praise the lord for the UK food festival circuit) for his USDA brisket, pork and beef ribs.

Inside and out it’s painfully Shoreditch but all is forgiven two plum sours and a brisket bun in.

It’s buttery, soft and squidgy, and packed with melting, sticky beef brisket, deliciously lethargic from its low and slow sleep in the smoker, and livened up with lairy (and inconsistently hot, beware) pickled red chillies.

Pastrami with sour cabbage and pickles was moreish – rudely blushing pink – amongst the dark, sticky plates that continued to stack up.

A jacket potato – skin crisp, filling gooey – had been pimped up with a pleasingly shameful amount of sour cream and chives, its bubbly golden top calling our name as it arrived on the table.

Fay Maschler reviews Smokestak: Smoking hot street food finds a ...

Review analysis
food   staff   desserts   drinks  

If you can’t find the number in Sclater Street heading from Boxpark towards Brick Lane, the heady scent of woodsmoke, nicotine-coloured corners of Dickensian windowpanes and terrace tables so solid you couldn’t move them away if you wanted to announce where David Carter, a main man in the arena of London’s street food, has come to rest.

It was brisket buns with pickled red chillies that galvanised the queues at Street Feast Dalston Yard, Dinerama, Hawker House and Broadgate Ice Rink.

Desserts also play with charring, as in sticky toffee pudding with burnt butter ice cream.

Toasted ice cream with salted hazelnut praline sets the seal on a theme running right through what actually turns out to be a gastronomic rock concert.

As David Carter has remarked, whether fine dining or street food, everything requires attention to detail and passion.

Grace Dent reviews Smokestak: A symbol of London's attitude to ...

Review analysis
food   staff  

If I am weary of this it is of great comfort to know that David Carter, the chef and proprietor of the newly opened Smokestak close to Brick Lane, appears to be somewhat on the same page.

Smokestak chivvies in what I envisage to be the era of the grown-up barbecue.

Smokestak is about stylish wood-smoking with good, on-point service.

There is also, I found out to my glee, a fantastic windowless dive bar in Smokestak’s basement serving hard liquor about which no good can ever come of knowing.

Not merely because these are the best beef ribs being dished up in the UK right now but because I could bore you with how many miles Carter travelled to find the perfect smoker (4,000 since you ask) then lay down all manner of macho-friendly witterings about the cow’s CV, its ensuing mouthfeel or the fact that Smokestak serves nuggets of pig tail as a side, but this has all been said about barbecue many times before.

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