Smokehouse at the Obar

This is a little bit of a departure for me. I was asked to review a local pop up and, to be entirely transparent, was offered dinner.  I went with the intention of being totally honest (dinner for two doesn't buy my loyalty) and so honest I shall be.

The Smokehouse is a US style barbecue themed pop up, upstairs at the Obar on Braunstone Gate in Leicester.  I agreed to review the restaurant after scoping the menu online. It looked promising and was limited to 4 or 5 small and large meals with optional sides all of which sounded tempting.  Anyone who reads my blog will know that I am a huge fan of doing a few things well with locally sourced ingredients and the menu delivered on this.

We arrived for dinner and ordered a pint, with chatty, friendly service we were taken up to our table.  The room was quirky with art for sale on the walls, mismatched furniture and blues playing at a respectable volume. In short there was a lot to like about it.

I ordered St. Louis cut barbecue pork ribs with a fennel and jalapeño slaw as I'm a sucker for a big chunk of meat on the bone. My other half ordered pulled pork and pork chilli, with garlic and rosemary mashed potatoes with house gravy (we'd read another blogger raving about the mash).  Our food arrived after a reassuring pause, with more good service.

My wife's pulled pork was incredibly, meltingly tender, delicately spiced and smoky, complimented by a tasty vegetable rich chilli and smooth buttery mash.  My ribs were big and meaty (due to the hard to get hold of 'St Louis cut'), crispy on the outside and subtly smoked with a heavier barbecue spice flavour. The ribs were delicious if a little tough, although as the flavour was so good this wasn't a major concern.  The fennel slaw worked perfectly with the pork and the jalapeño added a nice chilli spice kick.

Somehow we found space for dessert and shared a sticky toffee pudding with a salted caramel sauce spiked with bourbon.  This was a revelation and we fought over the last mouthful - enough said.

I think that the American barbecue theme worked perfectly here, the concept was a very good one and the food tasted wonderful.  I was glad to see that there was no option for the ubiquitous 'fries' on the menu as they really weren't required when there were so many interesting tasty alternatives. Fries would be doing the rest of a menu a disservice.  As you'd expect from somewhere that was primarily a bar, there was

a great American craft beer list to go with the food.

With drinks our dinner for two came in at £40ish, a reasonable price point for well executed, great quality food.