Up In Smoke Better Not Be A Self-Fulfilling Prophecy

Because it's a darn good barbecue restaurant! Laura and I spotted it on Tennessee Street, where Carlos' Cuban Cafe stood for many years, and brings back high school memories of Leon for me. *sniff* Now that location is the home of "Up In Smoke", a BBQ joint with a cute sign that sputters smoke out of the top of it sometimes. It just opened in the last week or two apparently, so we decided to give it a try.

The place is surprisingly spacious compared to how it looks from the outside, and for that matter, for how cluttered the parking lot is. There were hardly one or two spaces left for us to park during the lunch rush, and yet when we made our way inside, we were lead to a completely empty bar area - the rest of the restaurant was packed though. Apparently their bar serves beer and wine, duly noted. But for the lunch break, we came to eat. We also noticed they serve hot wings, but we resisted the temptation... we came here for barbecue, and I was determined to have ribs.

The menu posed a good variety, and many cleverly named items, some creative approaches too. One of the first two things that caught us were among the side items: Four cheese pretzel Mac, and Cucumber and onion salad. Laura ordered a pulled pork plate, and I opted for a 3-combo platter, choosing ribs, 1/4 chicken, and a hot sausage. We both went with the intriguing side items. Like any good BBQ restaurant, Up In Smoke makes a handful of its own sauces: regular, sweet, hot, and mustard. We couldn't wait to try these.

But before applying sauce to anything, we had to see what it was like on its own. Laura didn't fare as well as I did... her pulled pork, while it tasted good, was a little on the tough side. On the other hand, I brought home quite the haul. The ribs fell off the bone like they ought to, in fact, when I got to the sauce tests, I couldn't keep the meat ON the bone long enough to sauce it - gravity did all the work for me. More importantly, the dry rub that they used on the ribs and the chicken was absolutely superb! You can taste it a lot stronger on the chicken though, it was rather subdued on the ribs, but you could still taste it. It's a nice, complex, smokey and dull spicy flavor, perhaps Mesquite, except the only Mesquite I'm familiar with comes on a potato chip. :( But it tasted a lot like that, strong without being overpowering, very rich. The sausage was fairly hot, and very beefy, reminded me of an Andouille sausage, which it may have been, but wasn't labeled as such. As far as the sauces went, they weren't terribly impressive, but not bad either. The "normal" sauce is surprisingly sweet, in fact we debated whether or not it was actually sweeter than the "sweet" sauce. It seemed rather vinegar based, probably a lot of molasses. Good, though, and my second favorite sauce among them. The sweet sauce tasted similar, maybe with a touch of honey in it, and again, arguably as sweet as the regular sauce or a little less, even. The "hot" BBQ sauce was rather disappointing for us, as spicy food veterans, in fact we could hardly tell if it had any spice in it. At least it wasn't sweet like the normal sauce, but it certainly wasn't hot. The mustard BBQ sauce might be the best, though it was fairly similar to run of the mill honey mustard, just a bit smokier. To be honest, the dry rub is so good that I hardly used the sauces after I'd tried them all, just a dab to moisten the meat a bit, and mostly I just enjoyed the excellent dry rub it came with.

The side items were pretty good. The mac and cheese was a little underwhelming, only in the sense that when we saw "pretzel" in the title, we got our hopes really high. Truth is, it's standard - but very good - creamy macaroni and cheese with various noodle types, drizzled on top with crumbled pretzel as a breading or crust, like an old fashioned mac n' cheese. But really, it just tasted like any old bread crumbs, it wasn't particularly salty or had any "baked" flavor, if it added any flavor at all. It really was just texture, a very mild crunch. However, don't misunderstand me as an overall rating, it was good macaroni and cheese! Just don't let "pretzel" fool you into thinking it's really fancy, in fact if it intimidates you, don't let it. As for the cucumber and onion salad, I really enjoyed it, Laura wasn't about it. In fact it's similar to a cucumber salad recipe that's been in my family for years. They take carve up cucumber into chips and slice some white onions, then let it soak in a mixture of sour cream and vinegar, which winds up being a rather thin "soup", and throw in a few other subtle spices, probably just salt and pepper. It was rather tangy and a little sour, approaching the taste of a pickle, but much more smooth rather than tart. I thought it was delicious, but you should probably know what you're getting into.

I should also mention that the service was very quick and accommodating. We will definitely be revisiting so that Laura can try some of the other things, and so I can try the rest of the options, and both of us need to see what their hot wings are like! The prices were reasonable, and I had plenty of food on the combination platter. And as mentioned, there are a good handful of other creative-looking items on there that I'm dying to try. And quite honestly, that dry rub alone is enough of a trump card that I might not be visiting Sonny's any time soon. Again, the quality of their meat was top notch, and slow cooked to perfection, the way good authentic barbecue should be. Up In Smoke, Tallahassee's newest BBQ restaurant, is located at 402 E Tennessee St next to Leon High School.