Smoke This
You gotta have bulletproof glass, utilitarian decor, and a grizzled soul man stoking an aquarium-style smoker or a black pit drum with hickory and fruitwoods to have great barbecue, right? In Chicago, until about two years ago, this seemed the rule.
In these parts, good ‘cue was predominantly an African American community–driven affair. Finger-lickin’ piles of ribs sandwiched in clamshell styrofoam that are so good you wolf them down while leaning against your car came from unremarkable storefronts on the city’s south side (save Honey 1).
So when Smoque BBQ opened last December on the north side with a ton of accolades, lines out the door, and media coverage second only to that of Britney Spears’s affairs, I was skeptical. Were people (me included) covering the ‘cue so heavily because it was coming out of a clean well-lit space in an upper middle class Chicago neighborhood from white people, or because it was genuinely good?
