Hong Kong’s newest smokehouse concept, Smoke & Barrel, has some sound ideas but lackluster execution doesn’t make the best first impression.
When we first talked about Smoke & Barrel last month, we were quite excited, and who wouldn’t be by the idea of a New York wood-fired smoking barrel called The Beast and a menu from the guys behind Kinship that promised slow-cooked seduction from south of the Mason-Dixon line. However, as so often happens in Hong Kong, the reality doesn’t meet the fantasy).
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We’d tried to book a table but the restaurant’s online booking system repeatedly said no reservations were available – which isn’t surprising given current dining restrictions and the fact that the restaurant (not to be confused with new BBQ take away joint Smoke & Barrels) is pretty new – so an American mate and self-confessed ‘ribanado’ and I decided to try our luck with a walk-in, arriving just before 9 pm on a Saturday night.
After checking with the kitchen, the charming hostess guided us to a two placed high top with a great view of the expansive open kitchen, including the aforementioned Beast, a huge black smoker imported from the Big Apple. The hostess then produced an iPad and asked for our name, email address, and phone number, explaining “you know, in case something happens”, and admitted the details would be used for limited email marketing. Annoying but not uncommon in this data-harvesting age.
Our cheerful waiter then arrived to explain the concept and the menu. He diligently pointed out the different dishes, emphasising that the beef short rib was what the restaurant was known for and that encounters at Smoke & Barrel should include it before recommending the “Let Us Feed You” option, another increasingly common solution priced at HK$488 per person that sees the chef choose the dishes for you. The waiter was fairly vague on exactly what this feast would constitute – he couldn’t even tell us how many sides it would include – only that all was at the discretion of the chef but we decided to try our luck.
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Consequently, we didn’t supplement our order with any other dishes, including the famed short rib, which the waiter was quick to point out (once we had ordered) that this was the one dish on the menu that would definitely not be included. In our minds, that didn’t make much sense, given it was the hero dish and we had opted for the smokehouse equivalent of an omakase menu, but we were happy enough to leave ourselves in the hands of the restaurant’s chef, assuming he wanted to represent his menu in the best light possible.
While we waited on dinner, we ordered drinks, a pint of Brooklyn lager for my dining companion, and a Jalapeno Paloma for me. The cocktail was nice enough, light and refreshing, but there was little evidence of the peppers except for a greenish colour.
The ambiance of Smoke & Barrel is what you’d expect from a smokehouse – lively and loud, with dark industrial-chic interiors, timber and naked concrete, and all the action of the kitchen on display, which is always fascinating.
The first dish to arrive threw us a little; we were all geared up for Southern decadence, and dishes we’d rather not tell our wives or cardiologists about, and while the house-cured salmon gravlax with bagel dust, cream cheese, and bourbon glaze was eye-catching in its presentation (for a red meat joint), the proportions were a little out of whack, with a sizable mound of cream cheese leftover after the few strips of salmon on top were consumed.
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We did what any red-blooded males would do in this circumstance – we asked for some bread. A single piece of sourdough toast was delivered with fanfare, which didn’t really make sense given there were two of us and plenty of cream cheese leftover. The waiter looked at us, looked at the plate, comprehension washing across his face, and ran back to the kitchen, this time returning with two more pieces and a basket of fried calamari with lemon pepper. The calamari was nicely cooked and well-seasoned, with the batter light and crunchy, but there were very few intact rings – all carefully laid on top – and instead most of the pieces resembled those crispy French fry ends that accumulate at the bottom of a paper bag.
Then it was time for the main event, a sharing plater of carnivorous appeal, if not proportion. There was a portion of 12-hour slow-cooked brisket, and four cider glazed baby backed pork ribs, a single chicken thigh, and a chopped up ‘seasonal sausage’. On the side were a few pickled zucchini slices and some red onion rings.
Although missing that fabled sort rib, the platter was a good cross-section of what The Beast produced, although we couldn’t help feeling that the sausage was being used more as a filler. It would have also been nice if the kitchen had disjointed the chicken thigh rather than leaving us to try and do it with butter knives like a couple of muppets, especially as you can’t order the Let Us Feed You option until there are at least two participating diners, making these things fairly obvious.
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The ribs were the sickly sweet, tangy, gooey, running-down-your-fingers goodness we had anticipated, although the sauce was so sweet and plentiful that there was little flavour from the actual meat, which was incredibly tender and fell from the bone. The brisket, on the other hand, was dry (it was nearing the end of service so perhaps it had been sitting idle) and lacking in any real flavour. The salt and pepper chicken was succulent, juicy and well-seasoned, once we had carved it up, and the sausage was perfectly ok but innocuous.
The meat platter was joined by a couple of dense but also dry cornbread squares, and a basket of “Japanese tater tots”, that ubiquitous childhood snack, topped with bonito flakes in what I consider a disappointing flourish to a sadly forgettable meal. Crunchy and hot, they’d be great at a pub but here they just seemed like filler fodder.
As “Hong Kong’s first authentic American smokehouse”, Smoke & Barrel’s menu is packed with fascinating and delicious-sounding barbecue dishes, and the chef’s selection is supposed to be a showcase of that culinary style, so to kick off with Norwegian salmon and calamari, and then finish off with the same snack my friend feds to his kids, seems laughable. Where’s the slaw? Where are the beans or the Brussels (and I’m not usually one to nudge aside the meat in search of some vegetables)? Where’s the culture and tradition that we were promised? The elements all appeared on the menu but alas, it seemed not to be what the chef wanted us to be eating.
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The meal finished as oddly as it began, with a single piece of Mississippi mud cake with cranberry and orange, shared by two relatively burly lads, on the town for some ribs and camaraderie. It’s not how I had seen the evening ending.
Many Hong Kong restaurants arrive with bold, themes and then fall flat when it comes to authentic flavour and execution, and that’s what we encountered at Smoke & Barrel, which left a sense of disappointment that was only accentuated by prices that seemed out of touch given that there are plenty of spots in Hong Kong doing things better for less at the moment.
However, I have no doubt that Smoke & Barrel will find its pace, and suspect that if we had arrived at the beginning of service our chef’s selection might have been more indulgent and less a mop-up of leftovers. Attentive service, a lively ambiance, and a menu filled with potential means there’s still a chance we will return to Smoke & Barrel – we’ll just handle the ordering ourselves.
Note: The author visited as a paying guest without the restaurant’s prior knowledge
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AM Reviews: When Smoke Gets in Your Eyes
Hong Kong’s newest smokehouse concept, Smoke & Barrel, has some sound ideas but lackluster execution doesn't make the best first impression.
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Cuisine
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Ambiance