Smokehouse Grille and Wingery

Critic's Review

The Wingery has bitten the dust.

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I was planning on hitting the Grand Opening; they were giving away a sampler, but I didn't get a chance. I had some other, non-food related business in Boca today, so I decided to pick up some food on the way home. Of course this place isn't on the way home from just about anywhere; this is about as far west as you can get.

This is a part of town where people drive 3 mph and take about 10 minutes to get through a door, so leave a little extra time. I considered eating in, but I realized that I was going to order a lot more food than I was going to eat, so I decided to order take out. It was about 3:15pm and I was only showed a main menu; at their other location they have lunch specials until 4pm, so I don't know if they just didn't show me a lunch menu, or they don't have one at this location. I suspect the former. Their web site is out of date; this is the kind of place that has press releases and lots of pictures of smiling faces on their facebook page, but no menus or info that can actually be of use in making your decision to go there.

I didn't like the wings I got at their other location, so I ordered the Pit 1, which includes 1/2 rack of ribs, pulled pork and brisket. I also ordered their new french dip, which the menu says is smoked prime rib served au jus with horseradish cream and caramelized onions. These 2 orders scored me 3 sides; I opted for baked beans, cole slaw and mac and cheese. They told me it would be 15-20 minutes, so I left to grab a menu from Gary Woo's Express. When I returned, the order was all packed up and sealed.

When I got home, I unpacked the order for a picture.

The picture has everything that was in the bag except for 2 plastic utensils packs, you know, the ones with a fork, knife and a small napkin. Why they thought the tiny napkin was going to be enough for eating ribs, I can't really say. The sides are very small; too small in my opinion for the prices they're charging.

I was going to eat the french dip, except I soon realized that there was no dip. No au jus, no horseradish cream, no caramelized onions. They'd just stuffed a bun with prime rib and put it into a container without any of the stuff that makes a french dip any good. I figured I'd have to make the sandwich into something with melted cheese but I didn't feel like cooking at the moment, so I dug into the rest of the stuff. At this point I realized that they didn't give me any BBQ sauce. Just great.

The beans were pretty good; there were bits of meat and they were medium sweet, the cole slaw was fair; not too sweet but not much taste at all, and the Mac and Cheese was really cheese and mac; it was like a cup of cheese with little, severely overdone bits of macaroni in it. I'm sure an 8 year old would love it, but it was just junk to me. Their cornbread is unique; it had pablano peppers in it and some sort of cheese; unfortunately I don't eat cornbread so a taste was all I got of that.

The ribs were very good; although they were very different from the wings I'd had at the other location. The ribs from East Boca were the "fall off the bone" kind; these were meatier and smokier. But the brisket was terrible; perhaps the worst brisket I've ever had. It was more like pot roast; dry and completely unseasoned and tasteless.. It was like they had no idea now to make brisket; like they just slapped a piece of meat in a smoker without preparing, marinating or mopping it.

The pulled pork was a bit better; at least it had some taste. There was a lot of crust, like they just ripped off the end and plopped it into the container. I kind of expect them to cut out the globs of crust and fat from pulled pork before they do the pulling. Of course it had no sauce, and as I mentioned, they didn't give me any sauce with the order. I had some left over from Bad Bob's.

The bottom line with this is that I spent $26. for about $12 worth of decent food; one dish was completely incompetently made and some other stuff was just so bad that it wasn't worthy of ingestion. No usable napkins or wet naps with ribs, no BBQ sauce. I hardly know what to say. The only thing I've found good about either of these locations is the ribs. Sometimes you just get food you don't like and that's one thing; but in this case my meal was ruined by people who were just careless. And the training and supervision of the people who made these mistakes is the restaurant's responsibility.