Restaurant review: Smoke at Belmont Hotel in Dallas

by The Law Reviewers of The Law Reviewers

DALLAS — So many snarky titles, so little time … Some we considered were: "What Were They Smoke-ing?" "Smoke-ing Is Hazardous to Your Wallet," "Mind If We (Criticize) Smoke?" "Smoke Is an Expensive Habit," "Please Don’t (go to) Smoke," "Where There's Smoke, There's Price-Gouging," "Smoke, Um, Don't Got 'Em," "Smoke Gets in Your Eyes … And Your Clothes and Hair" and "Thank You for Not Smoke-ing."

That should give you a rough idea of what we thought of the place. It’s not that Smoke is entirely bad, but it sure feels like yet another example of an over-priced, over-done restaurant concept that will appeal to the right (read: PaperCity) crowd for about six months before they move on to the next big flashy streetlight along the highway. We hope that Smoke will turn out to be better than that, but it needs to make some changes for us to want to go back anytime soon on our dime.

Until not too long ago, Smoke was Cliff Café, a moderately upscale down home style diner concept located in the Belmont Hotel in Oak Cliff just south of the mighty Trinity and downtown. The food was decent and inventive, if a little pricey. Either that concept went stale or people stopped coming, and the powers that be at Belmont decided to switch gears. Now the restaurant has been reborn as a Southern smokehouse concept. Smoke’s website describes itself as “an old fashioned smokehouse, with hardwood cooking from scratch and authentic Southern flavors.” It all sounds great on paper/screen, and in some ways the food didn’t disappoint; there were just too many things that fell short and made a repeat trip questionable.

We'll say this for Smoke, the name is appropriate since the first thing you'll notice as you approach the restaurant from the parking lot is the aroma of tangy smoke billowing from inside. Enjoy that smell, because you'll be wearing it for the rest of the day. This is probably an element that the chef/owners wanted to reproduce from the Carolina smokehouses they visited, but it's not what many of their office-dwelling clientele will want to bring with them back to the office. The décor hasn’t changed a whole lot since the Cliff Café days; it still has a fairly spare and modern setup and the owners have added straight-lined modern art with lots of oranges, reds, yellows, and browns on the walls to give it a more smokehouse-y feel. To us, the place actually had more of a Santa Fe modern than a Southern smokehouse vibe, which didn’t exactly scream, “Let’s get our ‘cue on!”

As for service, our waiter was a little uncertain at first, and our sassy questions about ordering quarter-pound instead of half-pound portions and sampling different meats initially threw him off his game, but by the end of the meal he was throwing sassy comments right back at us. He nixed our mix n’ match quarter-pound servings request, but did bring us a sample of the lemon & sage brined turkey, which tasted moist and succulent (although we couldn’t really pick up any lemon or sage in the small bite). Also, we failed to enjoy the highly touted (on Smoke's website) breadbasket, featuring cornbread served with Kentucky sorghum molasses butter and homemade sweet and sour jalapeno jelly, because no one ever brought it to us.

In an effort to add a dash of kitsch, Smoke provides you a Scantron® form with which to order your BBQ. According to Smoke’s website, “The Scantron® lets diners select their meat portion size – Sandwich, 1/2 lb, 1 lb. – and sides, all by filling in a Cold War styled form.” Because nothing makes you hungrier than relapsing back to your fond memories of multiple choice exams and mutually assured destruction! What’s next -- duck and cover drills? Anyway, since we figured at a place called Smoke you have to order the ‘cue, we dutifully filled out our Scantrons® with our order but were disappointed when our waiter didn’t shout, “Pencils down!” before collecting them.

Our food took a good while to come out to us and, in the world of BBQ, that is strange since you’d figure all they’d have to do is carve up the meats and bring them out. In another effort to mix the down home with the high falutin’, the meat dishes were served in traditional BBQ-joint-style butcher paper which was crammed uncomfortably inside metal baskets. The paper stuck out almost a foot from the meat baskets (mental note: possible band name) in every direction and made it difficult to get to the meat and sides without kicking up a heck of a paper crumpling ruckus. Another head scratcher was the fact that the sides are all a minimum of $4 extra, including a garnish tray which most places would throw in for free.

The Dry Rubbed Pork Spare Ribs ($12 for ½ rack) were falling off the bone to the point that they were kinda messy, but the rub gave a subtly zesty flavor to the meat so it didn’t need any sauce. The pig in the Pulled Whole NC-Style Hog sandwich ($6) was moist and tender but lacked any real flavor and definitely needed a little sauce to help it out. Fortunately, the restaurant provided a selection of four homemade sauces (free of charge!) that helped kick that pig up a notch (can we get a “Bam! Bam!”?) Our favorite sauces were the vinegary one and the mustard n' horseradish-y one. The Coffee Cured Beef Brisket ($9 for ½ lb) was a little too fatty and tough, but we like it lean, so we don't know what a traditionalist would think. It was OK with a little fat, but it wasn't $9-no-sides good. Despite the fat, it needed sauce as the highly anticipated coffee cure was nowhere to be tasted, and the sauce caused the butcher paper to dissolve, leaving a large sauce puddle on the table.

For the sides, we shelled out $7.50 for a double portion of the hominy, smoked cheddar, and green chili casserole, but it was worth it since the casserole was basically the tastiest side in the history of ever. Much like the food critic in Ratatouille, we were taken back to our childhood after the first bite of gooey melted cheese mixed with earthy hominy and piquant chilis. Unlike that food critic, we didn’t later discover that our food had been cooked by a rat and then backed that rat in a lucrative restaurant venture when the original restaurant was closed for health code violations and we were fired for giving a four-star rating to a restaurant run by a rat but, hey, it could happen, right? Anyhoo, we also had the $7.50 Russet fries, which were skin-on, hot, and sprinkled with tasty seasoning salt, and the $4 pinto beans, which didn’t really taste all that distinguished. The $4 garnish tray of nondescript pickled pickles, green beans, carrots, cabbage and peppers was $4. Did we mention we paid a minimum of $4 for each of those sides?

For dessert, we split the Molasses & Pecan Pie ($7) with sea salt caramel topping. And it’s a good thing, too, because the slice was huge and easily fed three people. The caramel topping tasted slightly burnt, but the gooey molasses and pecan filling was delicious and the crust was nicely flaky. Still, we would have happily forked over half the price for a smaller piece.

Smoke’s main problem is not that it’s pricey (Although, a $16 burger? Really? Really?!?) or that its food is bad (some of it is very good); it’s that it is being presented as a BBQ place for people who would never dare to set foot in a real BBQ place. So, you end up smelling like smoke, having to fight your way around crazy butcher paper corners, getting nickel-and-dimed for sides and paying too much for a dessert that you’d rather have half of. If the people behind Smoke would just tweak a few things to make those of us who don’t choose a restaurant based on the Night/Life pictures in D Magazine feel comfortable, then it could stick around here for a long time.

On our "Fond Scantron® Memories" five gavel scale, where five gavels is the time one of us finished an exam an hour early before celebrating summer break and one gavel is the time that same guy finished an exam a few minutes early before realizing he’d missed an entire section, we give Smoke 2 ¾ gavels, or the time a professor gave one of us a fake exam and then waited a whole half hour before letting that guy in on the joke. Freakin’ hilarious.

• Staff
• Verified User
• Anonymous