Baby, Its Pork Outside.
Because it’s been so cold we’ve been ordering a lot of delivery, usually involving some tried and true spots for no better reason than we’ve just been too lazy to do any dining research. While we still didn’t get out of the house last Friday night, we did try something new – delivery from the Smoke Shack (Halsted and Altgeld in Lincoln Park).
First, hats off to our new love grubhub.com, which let me place my order and pay for everything on my card (even the tip…actually it even calculated my tip) so that all the delivery guy had to do was hand me a bag of warm BBQ.
So back to the food part. We decided to try Smoke Shack because I was waking down Halsted one day and was struck by a strong BBQ smell, which led me to investigate…and right to the Smoke Shack’s doors, which conveniently have carry out menus right by them. Of course, we love BBQ and it seemed like a perfect meal for a night when the temps were supposed to dip to two degrees.
We each got a main dish and split a few sides –- cornbread, cole slaw, and Parmesan crusted mac and cheese. But let’s start with the BBQ. I had my standard, a pulled pork sandwich, which was delicious — just the right balance of sauce (which Clark described as “tangy” but in a good way) and meat so that the sandwich wasn’t soggy but it wasn’t too dry either. It was also a refreshingly good-sized portion for me; I feel like a lot of BBQ joints try to slop on as much meat as they can but this place got it right.
Clark had ordered the rib tips sandwich, which sounded too good to be true, and he was eager to see how you make a sandwich consisting of meat, bone, cartilage and fat. But upon delivery, we had learned that they messed up on his order and gave him plain old rib tips instead. If you follow Clark’s eating trends, this was a mistake on their part, but Clark came out the winner. They even charged us for the rib tips sandwich, not the rib tip dinner, giving him a bigger, more expensive meal for the price of a sandwich. Cha-ching.
The tips were excellent. The quality of meat was good. The slow cooking and the tips themselves made it very easy to separate the fat and bone from the meat. There were some really good portions that had the tough meaty muscle parts; those are always the best. The only complaint is the sauce. Clark is not a big fan of the super tangy sauces. It’s not a life or death thing, just personal preference. Also, more sauce on the tips would have been nice, but in this case because, he didn’t like the sauce that much, it was ok.
The side dishes were each pretty good in their own way. The one we were most curious about – the Parmesan crusted mac and cheese – was probably the most rewarding. According to Clark, it was the highlight of this meal. It was quite delicious, not overwhelmingly cheesy, and the bread crumb crust topping made it feel really comforting. Not much to say about the cornbread, except two thumbs up, although I could have used some real butter for it (which may or may not go against all BBQ rules, but who knows….I’m Polish). We were divided on the slaw; while I really enjoyed the flavor and texture and Clark proclaimed it too soggy but then ended up scarfing the leftovers down later that evening.
Clark thinks Smoque and Smoking Woodies are by far better if you’re looking for BBQ on the northside of Chicago. For a place that calls itself the Smoke Shack, the food didn’t really seem like it had that smoky taste, other than some “liquid smoke” type stuff, and maybe that would explain the over tanginess of the sauce.
However, despite this “tangy vs. smoky” debate Smoke Shack was a good find at a good price ($25, including delivery fee and tip). We’ll be back.
