Awesome meal at Barque Smokehouse!

Barque Smokehouse (@barquebbq) is one of 2011’s new best restaurants – and is well worth the visit! Located in the Roncesvalles Village, Barques‘ is a smokehouse that brings out the best classic southern barbeque that you can find in the area.

Barque Smokehouse accepts reservations but leaves 1/3 of the restaurant for walk in customers. I arrived with IL on a Sunday evening around 5:30pm, attempted to make reservations 2 days prior but no luck. So we decided to try our luck with walk-in and the restaurant was already packed when we arrived! The hostess asked if we were okay sitting at the kitchen bar – we didn’t have a problem with that because it would probably be 2 hours before getting a table seat anyways.

The theme at Barque’s is very woodsy – literally everywhere, even the bathroom stalls had tree bark with fancy sliding doors (lol)

The view from the back of the restaurant:

My view for the entire night- That’s the down side to sitting in front of the kitchen T____T Just got to wait patiently =D

Our server was really friendly and thoughtful. Sometimes servers may tend to dismiss customers when the restaurant becomes real busy – but this was not the case at all, our server made the time to chat with us and occasionally checked in on us to see if we needed anything else.

Table Setting: Did I mention they serve complimentary sparkling water?! 

Dinner Menu: The menu was on an one page A4 paper. Very easy and simple to read. Serving appetizers, mains (with sampler options), soup & salads, sides and desserts!

Every table was given a bucket of complimentary seasoned popcorn with their signature barbecue sauces: Kansas City (tomato based) and Carolina (mustard and vinegar based).

Black Cherry Boylan ($3)

  • This was my first time trying a Boylan drink – at first I thought this tasted like medicine but after a few sips I started to become addicted to the “cherry-ness” – Super refreshing =D

Brisket Poutine ($10)

  • The brisket poutine, served on a personal sized pan, was one of the best I’ve ever had- my taste buds were bombarded with flavour
  • Had a lot of barbecue and sweet flavour from the brisket that was accompanied by hot, melted oozing cheese over the surface
  • the tenderness of the fries were oh-so-good! the ends were really crispy and soft & mushy on the insides

I snapped another photo of the fries underneath all the melted oozing cheese!

Sample for 2 ($40)

  • For the sampler option, you get to select 3 of the following 4 items: Brisket / Two Beef Ribs / Baby Back Ribs / TWO competition chicken thighs
  • You also get to select 3 of 7 sides!
  • I really enjoyed the ribs – made to the right texture and very flavourful – I didn’t brush my ribs with any sauce at first to get an idea of what it tasted like on its own
  • In terms of taste, the ribs had a great deal of smokiness to it but not overdone
  • I did not find the ribs dry at all – they aren’t the “fall off the bone” type of ribs but still very meaty and yummy

Cuban Corn (Side #1 – shown above)

  • Cuban corn is slightly grilled with a bit of spiciness to it – super buttery
  • Perhaps the cuban corn was overdone because the natural juiciness and sweetness of the corn  wasn’t present

Squash Gnocchi (Side #2)
  • The gnocchi was also served in a personal sized pan in a creamy – Asiago cheese sauce
  • Cooked al dente!

Barque Caesar (Side #3)

  • The Barque Caesar came with croutons, bacon, cheese and dressing
  • Lightly tossed- just the right amount of dressing

Home-made Peacan Pie ($8)

  • The peacan pie is served with Greg’s Marshmallow ice cream
  • I personally don’t like peacan pie to begin with so I thought this was just alright – I didn’t enjoy the bottom crusty layer of the pie
  • The marshmallow ice cream however was really refreshing

I was extremely impressed with Barque Smokehouse, the food was delicious and prices were reasonable. Barque is well worth the visit and is going to be a packed hotspot for the next little while.  Highly recommend the Brisket poutine and any of the samplers =]

Just keep in mind that Barque is always bustling with people – so be prepared to wait for good food – or better yet make reservations WAY in advance!

Barque Smokehouse on Urbanspoon

Join DiningDateNight.com and get 30% off your entire bill from the top restaurants in Toronto. Absolutely free to join

Follow:
Share:

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

%d bloggers like this: