THIS PLACE IS GONE!
“Only Jews and Texans understand brisket.”
---
Anthony Bourdain
“Not
all of them.”
---
Howard
SMOKE
CITY MARKET
5242
Van Nuys Boulevard
Sherman
Oaks, CA 91401
818-855-1280
11:00
AM to 10:00 PM or until they run out of meat
Some of the best barbecue in Texas is served up at some
of the quirkiest places. You find a
small stand with a big smoker behind it.
They fire up the smoker with oak at 3:00 AM and slowly smoke meat that
is prepared with nothing more than a salt and pepper rub. They open the stand at noon, sell the meat by
the pound and close when they run out of meat.
The service is strictly at the cutting board and they wrap your meat in
butcher paper and you walk off with it. You
may be able to get some pit beans as a side and you can pull a bottle of soda
from an old Coke cooler. There will
probably be some picnic tables for seating, outside, paper towels for
napkins, and if you must, a bottle or two of barbecue sauce. The meat at these places is so tender and
flavorful (It’s usually grass fed, beef, not feed lot beef.) that people line
up at 8:00 AM waiting for the place to open so they don’t miss out. Smoke City Market is an attempt to bring this
“meat market” style of Texas barbecue to Los Angeles.
It’s in a store front on Van Nuys Boulevard. There are some small, two person, picnic tables
in front and larger picnic tables inside.
Enough Texas memorabilia is nailed to the walls to establish their Texas
cred, but I wouldn’t call this interior restaurant designer anything by any
stretch of the term. There is the old
Coke cooler alongside where people line up to order. You walk up to the order counter to place
your order and pick up your order on the other side of the register at the
other end of the counter. The prep table/cutting
boards are behind the order counter.
Meat is sold by the half-pound with market prices posted on a large board
behind the prep counters. Your order
comes on a tray, or as many trays as necessary, and they tear off a couple of
feet of butcher paper, from a roll behind the counter, for each person in your
party. You put the butcher paper down in
front of you on the picnic table, put your meat on it and go to town. Napkins are sheets pulled from a paper towel
dispenser on a post in the middle of the room, and there is a bucket on each
table with plastic utensils and a couple of squeeze bottles of barbecue sauce. When we were there a sound track was playing
that indicated that someone really likes their classic rock and roll.
The sauces are what you might expect at a real Texas meat
market style establishment. One is a
standard sort of sweet barbecue sauce and the other is a vinegar and mustard
hot sauce. In Texas you will find that
the meat at these places is so flavorful that the sauce is redundant. I wish I could say that here.
Beef Brisket
They serve it lean or moist. In Texas this does not mean sauced or dry,
but do you want it cut from the lean end or the fat end. We chose it lean. I will tell you that it looked just right,
juicy, just cooked through, and cut with the touch of a fork (even a plastic
fork). What we could not understand is how
they could manage to rub a brisket with salt and pepper, smoke it over oak for
somewhere between 12 and 18 hours, have it look so good, and be so tasteless. There were some “Best Meat” awards on the
wall, but whoever awarded them did not taste this brisket this evening. Just to give you an idea of how bland this
brisket is, I had no hesitation in sharing some of the leftovers with my cats. It wasn’t spicy enough to make them spit it
back at us or rich enough to make them throw it back up.
St Louis Spare Ribs
These ribs were reasonably meaty and did have a slight
oak smoke flavor. They were tender and
not stringy (not something you would expect from pork anyway) but seemed to be
a bit dry. Our impression was passable,
but not great ribs even as a leftover the next day.
Texas Beef Rib
Typical looking Texas beef rib, large, and one bone has
about a half pound of meat on it.
Because of the beef fat you knew it was beef, but somehow it didn’t have
any more flavor than the pork ribs.
Usually, Texas beef ribs shout “BEEF!” to the taste buds. This one was tender and not stringy, but as
Texas beef it was rather shy and retiring.
Again, something you can share with the cats.
Jalapeno Cheddar Link
I had intended to order a normal beef link, but they were
out of them at 7:00 in the evening. From
what I have been told by others who have been there this is a good thing, due
to the quality of the links, not a lapse of inventory management on the part of
the cooks. While I’m not a fan of novelty
links, with things like cheese in them, this was actually quite good. It was too hot for Sharon, but to my taste
had just a hint of jalapeno and no lingering after taste hotness. I would guess that most people will probably
find it hot enough to be glad that they give you a couple of slices of white
bread for each person in your party.
Pulled Pork
This is probably the best thing here, or at least the
best thing we tried. It was smoky,
tender, and manages to be relatively lean without being dry. A small amount of the vinegar and mustard
based sauce complements it well. I’ve
had better, but this is more than acceptable.
Just based on the pork, I would have no problems ordering a pulled pork
sandwich here…if it were just pork.
Cabbage and Apple Slaw
I think someone forgot to order the apples. There wasn’t a piece of apple in sight, but
it did have some carrot slivers. It was
way too wet with a thin dressing and seemingly just dead cabbage. For once I have found an incompetent slaw. It would have been better to have come from a
tub from Smart and Final.
Longhorn Mac and Cheese
This is rotini pasta with the most outrageously bland cheese
sauce we have experienced. Kraft mac and
cheese would have been better.
Pit Beans
Not bad, actually, not great, but more than
acceptable. Some barbecue places have
taken their beans to new heights. This
one does not reach for any culinary heights, but is a more than competent side
dish for barbecue.
Banana Pudding
This is a barbecue dessert staple, done disappointingly. It seemed a dispirited commercial pudding mix
poured into a plastic go box with a couple of banana slices and vanilla
wafers. Try Baby Blues or Famous Dave’s
to see how this should be done.
I suppose the problems we had with the Smoke City Market
were that we had expectations. With
great reviews, recommendations from acquaintances, and experience with Texas
barbecue, we were probably set up for a fall.
Regardless of our expectations, we would have been disappointed
anyway. We would really have to find a
good reason to give it another try. This one gets a five.
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