New Restaurant #1: Smoq – Kansas City Ribs – $20
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| Oops! We got a little hasty with the andouille corn dogs and cornbread |
Well, school is more than halfway done and the flying pig is a little more than a month away. I have to stop to say just how much I love this weather! I’m already seeing windows opening up at all of Mt. Adam’s hot spots you should check out on the hill. Live outdoor music should be starting in about a month too all over the city. It’s funny that I know more to do in this city than I do in my own home town.
The 2012 list is more diverse than the 2011 top 40 burgers list. This week I am doing my first review for the top new restaurants in Cincinnati. I hit Smoq way out in Fairfield with a friend who introduced me to the BEST smoked chicken wings of my life and hot sauce selection at Knockback Nat’s. So I figured I could trust her when she said that this will be the best bbq I’ve had…and she was right! Their motto is “if it’s legal, we’ll smoq it”, and they will. She had a Groupon which made it even better to experiment with more and have leftovers. We hit Smoq on Thursday night on January 26th, 2012 and it was a freezing rain day so it was empty. It is located next to Pappadeaux Seafood kitchen and the Springdale 18 movie theatre. Funny enough, I used to work at the building next to it years ago, before they opened. When you walk in, you will see pictures of former pioneers of bbq, but overall I will say the atmosphere was lacking. It was well lit and there wasn’t anything out of the ordinary from other places.
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| This is a gigantic rack of Kansas City dry rub ribs, the fried okra, cheddar grits and corn dogs. |
The menu has your typical bbq joint options, but then they step it up a notch. There is a change up of what you’ll find on the menu, so they don’t put the current one up. I was told that the deep fried ribs appetizer was their best selling, but what’s the point when you just get ribs? We started off with the andouille sausage corn dogs. These were pricey for what they were, but they were damn tasty. Their cornbread we had to start was more like a sweet cake than the taste I am used to. We dipped these into the 3 sauces they gave us just to get a taste for each. The North Carolina was a mustard bbq, Memphis was a sweet vinegary bbq, and the Kansas was like sweet baby rays bbq sauce. As far as entrees go, I went with the full rack of Kansas City ribs for 20$. These were huge and absolutely the best I’ve had and they were much cheaper than Montgomery inn…or should I say everything here was better than Montgomery inn because they boil their ribs and have a ketchup like sauce. I wonder how this city got trapped into the Montgomery inn is king of bbq because it’s expensive and fancy mentality? Since these are smoked over a long time, you could visibly see a pink smoke ring in the fall off the bone meat. Boiled ribs or just grilled ribs are tougher and take some effort to eat. The dry rub was so good on the meat, that I felt like I was contaminating the ribs with the tasty sauces. I love love love bbq sauce, but I ate these ribs without it because they were so tender and juicy. My company had the fried chicken, which came in some gigantic pieces, enough for another meal, and was some of the best I've had. They even smoked the fried chicken it seemed.
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| The fried smoked chicken, grits and baked mac & cheese |
If you are all about bbq like I am, get out to Fairfield and go to Smoq for the ribs. It’s no more expensive then Montgomery inn and it’s far better. So, I only have 47 more of these to do for 2012 and I am catching myself being busy 7 days a week at the moment and it’s only March, so I really gotta get on top of this shit!
