Thursday, April 23, 2009

Bone Daddy's House of Smoke


DALLAS: Bone Daddy's House of Smoke
8856 Spring Valley
Dallas, TX 75240
214-575-3050
Open Sun-Thur 11-11, F-Sat 11-12am
www.bonedaddys.com

This local chain is known for two things, and they can both be found in a meat market. Hot pants and crop tops hugged tightly to the friendly jail-bait staff, but we had Mrs. Smokemasterone in attendance to keep us in line. She even let Mr. Smokemasterone enjoy a supervised photo-op with our waitress.



The menu at this joint includes a wide variety of barbecue including pulled pork and peppered turkey in addition to the Texas basics. Our table ordered a little bit of everything, so I got to try most every protein offered.



In addition to huge chilled mugs of Shiner Bock, my plate also contained some shiners. That's the term for ribs that are so wanting for meat, you can see the top of the bone shining through. Although they lacked a generous amount of meat, they did have a good amount of flavor. Unfortunately the flavor came mainly from being finished on the grill while being basted with the sweet sauce rather than getting flavor from the smoker. In fact, we couldn't locate a smoker anywhere on site. But then, we may have just been blinded by all the neon.



The rest of the meats were just average with the slightly tough brisket containing a hint of smoke below a decent crust and meager smoke line. The sausage was just above grocery store grade with flecks of red pepper. The turkey was tender and juicy, but that's not hard to do when you start with deli turkey.

A week earlier, I stopped by to grab a "Flying Pig Sandwich" to go. It includes a layer of pulled pork, ham, sausage and bacon all topped by BBQ sauce. The first bite was delicious, with all of the flavors working well together. The bacon was definitely the strongest flavor, but not too strong to cancel out the other meats. After dissecting the sandwich, I sampled each meat seperately. The pulled pork was tender, smoky and the best meat on the sandwich. I described the mediocre sausage earlier, and the flavorless ham wasn't any better.



After trying every smoked meat offered here I felt like I had a good handle on their capabilities, and although the meal was tasty and satisfying, it simply cannot be qualified as high quality 'cue. With a full house nearly every night, there are certainly enough customers who are just here for the view anyway.

Rating**

Bone Daddy's on Urbanspoon

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

"Shiners," indeed. How did Aaron put it -- no one likes to have to scrape the bone?

I should mention my cheeseburger was fine, and thankfully it wasn't *that* weird to be one of four or five female customers in the whole place.

Thanks for letting me tag along and keep you boys in line.

- Mrs. Smokemaster1

DISCLAIMER:

Each joint is judged on the essence of Texas 'cue...sliced brisket and pork ribs. Sausage is only considered if house made. Sauce is good, but good meat needs no adornment to satisfy. Each review can only be based on specific cuts of meat on that particular day. Finally, if the place fries up catfish or serves a caesar salad, then chances are they aren't paying enough attention to the pits, so we mostly steered clear.

-THE PROPHETS OF SMOKED MEAT