Smokin' M's - a touch of UJ in Forest Park?

I watched for a few weeks while a COMING SOON - BBQ sign teased from an unassuming building near Circle and Roosevelt in Forest Park. Last week, this appeared:



The facade brings to mind a Sprint store crossed with the Hyde Park Wok 'n Roll, but a slogan in the window offers more promise:



Woodsmoke perfuming the block and a tidy, small seating area were good signs. I wasn't sure what to make of the murals, which are mostly behind the counter - idyllic country scenes on one side, people dressed up out on the town on the other. The menu looked good:



I ordered a rib tip and hot link combo for $7.99, off of a paper plate special on the counter. About seven members of a garrulous gringo family (biological or culinary) merrily manned the cleavers and shiny aquarium smoker, a good-sized one, at that. I asked them if they were related to the Missouri Smokin M's ( www.smokinms.com), and the pitmaster said he'd never heard of it, but was glad to meet a barbecue fan and hoped I liked their offerings.

In a hurry, I grabbed my order to go and attacked it (mostly) at home. A waxed paper bag (not pictured) sheltered a prodigious order of fries, thick-cut with skins on, crisp and tasty, lots of salt, not a bad start, though a bit raw-oily (I need a word for the taste of something when it's been cooked in fresh, not quite-yet-hot oil instead of seasoned, piping hot fat) since I probably had one of the first batches of the day.

A paper tray supported this:



Two good hot links (one did not survive the car ride home), and a very generous portion of rib tips. The links were just slightly overcooked, and had split wide open, but I must say that the flavor was excellent, between a sagey breakfast sausage and a good chorizo, fine ground, with heat coming from pulverized hot paprika as opposed to whole pepper flakes. There was detectable and much-appreciated seasoning from some time in the smoker. I did not have a chance to ask their source. The rib tips were addicting:



Not as succulent as Uncle John's, these were also arguably overdone to some tastes (Mack would have pulled them earlier), but I am a 'burnt ends' aficionado on my brisket, so even on my pork products I can appreciate some texture variety, down to the very crisp strips that pulled grudgingly from some of the smaller tips. They got better and more interesting the more I ate, and I ended up quite excited, pulling little morsels off and demanding that my wife try them ("wait, no, this one's REALLY good").

The coleslaw was present and unremarkable, and since I asked for both hot and mild sauces on the side, there were quite a few little plastic cups thrown in as well. Some fresh, squishy white bread (exactly what's missing from Honky Tonk) rounded out the package. The sauce was relatively thin, and tasted like a mix of some commercial products with some tinkering; respectable, but largely unnecessary because the meat was strongly and pleasantly flavored. The result was between Russell's (which I'm convinced is actually pre-thinned tonkatsu sauce. Say what you want about it, at least it doesn't seem to have artificial smoke flavoring) and one of the less hickory-aggresive Open Pits in both consistency and flavor.

As I thought about analogous 'que around the city, my mind kept returning to UJ's - aquarium smoker, very strong link showing, good, chewy, porky tips, house doctored-up sauce, large portion for a decent price. The superficials might be operating stronger in my mind than a raw quality for quality comparison, since today's was my standard order from Mack as well, but my delight at having a place like this so close to home clears any reservation I have about the simile.

I'll return (soon) to try some other delicious-looking things I saw going under the cleaver, at which point I'm sure this place will have been discovered by every yuppie newsman's J Crew-wearing internet research team member and pronounced as the self-discovered barbecue panacea of the Near Western Suburbs, but I choose, lovingly (my coat still smelling of pork), to share it with LTH first, which has brought me such smoked affection and comfort in my hour of need.

Smokin' M's
7507 W. Roosevelt Road
Forest Park, IL 60130
(708) 488-0123

Tentative schedule as of 1/13:

Mon-Thurs: 10 AM - 12 AM
Fri-Sun: 10 AM - 2 AM (!)

Oh boy, Oh Boy, Oh Boy!

I'll be there before this week is over. Any other sides avail that were not shown on the board, or the section of the board you snapped? Ribs - I'm gonna assume spares? Tip /link combo so close to home (I don't even consider Robinson's an option any more)

Santander, even if it's just decent, you just made my day!

I didn't spy any beans or mac, which are the other two sides I seek out these days at the nouveau-angloque spots. At the moment, it seems to be pretty stripped down, good city barbecue. I reckon you're right on the spares, and look forward to your report when you try them!

The only off-chalkboard items I saw mentioned were the tip/link combo, the sweet potatoe [sic] pie, and a cardboard pizza circle that said (wait for it) TiLAPiA! Unsure how exactly one smokes pond chicken, I didn't inquire about it. I'm excited to go back later this week for the pulled pork and to chat up the owners when I'm in less of a hurry; those chewy tips were quite good.

The only reason I ask about sides are for the s/o who is not a red meat or pork eater. Can't come home with a big bag o' q with nothing for the better half. Shrimp / catfish / tilapia will work out just fine tho. I'm gonna drive right by there today, but not be able to stop in. I'd bet, however, I'll report back on a trial by the end of the week.

Santander wrote:There was detectable and much-appreciated seasoning from some time in the smoker. I did not have a chance to ask their source. The rib tips were addicting:

Santander,

Thanks for the early intel, sounds like one of the better of the new crop of BBQ joints.

Enjoy,
Gary

I believe the owner of this new shop used to be one of the cooks at Jimmy's Restaurant in Forest Park.

Thanks for the review. I live in the neighborhood and have been surprised that they haven't had any "menu drops" in the area. Yours is the first I've heard of someone going there. Will have to give it a whirl.

Now keep in mind we have only been opened for about a month. There will definitely be more menu items to come! Thank you guys for the great post. Heres exactly what the menu looks like. Any questions or comments you have please email me.

[Mod edit: Menu pictures moved here.]

Welcome to the board! In case I forget (or am too hungry) to ask the next time I'm in, where are your delicious links from?

they are homemade links. family secret

I post this with trepidation, especially given the pleasant participation from the owners of Smokin’ M’s.

MikeG and I stopped by Smokin’ M’s a few days ago and were welcomed by the family behind the counter. Nice vibe. We checked out the sparkling new aquarium in back, and it looked cool, though nothing on there looked ready to eat.

MikeG’s tips and links looked promising:



The tips were quite chewy, and the links astoundingly dry, causing MikeG to speculate that perhaps both were reheated from the night before. I believe he was right. However, this is where the sauce came in handy. I usually avoid the sauce, but I found the sauce here just fine and necessary.



My whole chicken looked pretty good…but it wasn’t quite cooked, very chewy and stringy. I took a lot of it home, but The Wife made me dump it. It was red at the bone, not pink from the smoke, blood red.

My general recommendation would be to not go at lunch time -- at least for the time being -- or if you do, go late, to ensure you don’t get warmed over or under-cooked Q. This is a situation that's likely to change over time; the place hasn't been open long.

I sincerely hope this doesn’t come across as anything other than an honest effort to provide helpful criticism. The equipment is in place, the folks who run it are nice, so there could be something good here, but it’s going to take some time, and you're going to need to go at the right time of day.

DH - glad you two stopped in. Doneness aside, which was also an issue on my visit (see first post, though as I mentioned, my tolerance for chewy barbecue is very high), what did you think of the flavors, particularly in the tips and links?

Santander wrote:DH - glad you two stopped in. Doneness aside, which was also an issue on my visit (see first post, though as I mentioned, my tolerance for chewy barbecue is very high), what did you think of the flavors, particularly in the tips and links?

MikeG had the tips, so I just had a couple of them, but I thought the taste was just fine, and I remember thinking the links were just as you described (cooked 'til busting) and the taste was good, though because both were so dry, I needed the sauce, which tended to overwhelm the flavor of the links just a bit. My reaction to the sauce was more positive than yours (we had both hot and mild).

Not to get all fancy pants here, but in one of the early chapters of Brillat-Savarin's Physiology of Taste, the author talks about the importance of moisture as a flavor carrier. The problem with both tips and links was that they were so dry, the flavor had a hard time busting through.

To me...those split open links look like a travesty. In both pictures they look dry as can be. If you are smoking a sausage there is no reason it should ever bust open to that extent, unless the temperature is way too high.

KSeecs wrote:To me...those split open links look like a travesty. In both pictures they look dry as can be. If you are smoking a sausage there is no reason it should ever bust open to that extent, unless the temperature is way too high.

I have not been to Smokin M's, but did wish to point out that cutting links lengthwise just prior to service is a fairly common style decision amongst BBQ joints, Lem's for example. I mean this as simply a data point, if Hammond says astoundingly dry, I'm thinking Sahara.

David Hammond wrote:My whole chicken looked pretty good…but it wasn’t quite cooked, very chewy and stringy. I took a lot of it home, but The Wife made me dump it. It was red at the bone, not pink from the smoke, blood red.

Though the chicken may simply have been undercooked, another possible cause of red at the bone is much of the chicken we consume today is quite young even though, due to various hormones and breeding techniques, they are market size.

Often the bone is underdeveloped and somewhat porous allowing marrow to seep out through the bone. The red marrow, especially in conjunction with color from the smoke ring, can give the impression that fully cooked chicken is undercooked.

Info about chicken, bones and blood, along with a few mildly gross pictures, can be found here

Enjoy,
Gary

I was also there yesterday, on account of it's just across the street from Ultra Foods where I do about 95% of my grocery shopping. First the good news. The college kid behind the counter is a nephew of the owner and pit-man--it's his father who is still the cook at Jimmy's Place in Forest Park. The nephew is the one posting here and his responsibility, besides web-posting, is the fries. He cuts them by hand, and although he couldn't tell me what they were cooked in ("it's white, it comes in a box, you scoop it out"), I suspect it's something fabulously unhealthy. They were absolutely terrific. . I'd go back for the fries in an instant.

Unfortunately, like the prior posters here, I found the tips so tough as to be almost inedible--and I too have an affinity for chewy meat. They were fatty enough, so someone who knows more about bbq than I will have to explain, but let me just say this is not a pit master who is going to be giving Robert Adams a run for his money any time soon.

I like the place. I like the people. I'll stop by and try a half chicken (and more of those fries) sometime soon. But I'd wait another six weeks, or maybe six months, before making a final judgment on the pork.

New Q or Khan leftovers was my quandry for lunch today. Hoping to disprove the other posts, I opted for new q. Went with my UJ staple: Tip link combo, sauce on the side, no salt on the fries.

I agree with Ann F - the fries were good.

Mild Sauce: If I had to guess, it's based on Open Pit original recipe. Not the newer stuff Open Pit has come out with in the last few years, the old thinnish bright red stuff. After reading the description of the sauce in the initial post, I'm glad I got sauce on the side. Open Pit is just not for me. I'm not saying I have a better palate in any way - just saying it's not for me. Had some Sweet Baby Ray's hot at home - easily rectified. Anyway, when it comes to my q tastes, sauce is really an afterthought.

Links: Dry. Very dry. Sawdust grind. Nicely sage-y, mildly spicy. I ate 3/4 of one. I will not finish the other. This was not what I was hoping for, but that's just me.

Tips. Had two or three that showed promise, but the rest were dry and chewy. Definite plus was that they had good flavor to them, and I was eating them pretty much sans sauce.

IMHO -

I want this place to do well, and hopefully, they will. I am going to assume that they still need some time to adjust their methods with the smoker as most have concluded above. With a little tinkering here and there, I'm gonna go out on a limb and say that they should de-throne the near west suburban bbq king over on Madison a wee bit east of there. As it stands now, they might not accomplish that. If I was the pitman, I'd still be working at trying to perfect their product. I'll go back in a month or so to see if they've got it together. If an urge for q hit me in the near future, I'd be making my way down to E 69th. If the weather were better, of course I'd just smoke my own.

So, Smokin M's - Keep at it! I'm pullin' for ya!

I'll agree that the mild sauce is much too sweet--though at least it's not thick and gloppy like the worst BBQ sauce. I thought the hot (which was only mildly so) was MUCH better.

Ann Fisher wrote:
...Unfortunately, like the prior posters here, I found the tips so tough as to be almost inedible--and I too have an affinity for chewy meat. They were fatty enough, so someone who knows more about bbq than I will have to explain, ......

I'm no expert by any means, but I know that I can make tips that are far superior to the product I had from Smokin M's (That is, the tips I had today. Q quality can vary from time to time, and I am hoping that they will surely do better.) An educated guess of the issue is that the tips are being cooked too close to the heat source. Maybe the temperature gauge is further away from where the tips are placed in the smoker, and where they are placed is a little hotter than is expected when judging by the temperature reading? Just a guess.

So before we went to the opera tonight, The Wife cooked up some bean and barley soup, and I didn't taste it, but she said, "This could use some sausage or something." So, as I sat through Doctor Atomic, remembering what my friend Alec said he was thinking the last time he went to the opera (he was sitting in the balcony, and the thought crossed his mind, "If I throw myself over the railing, this will be over"), my thoughts turned to Smokin' M's, and that's where we stopped after the opera finally ground to the end, not to eat in but to take home and cook into the soup.

The tips were much moister and tastier than the last time I went, but some were just not cooked, which given the circumstances was okay because we were just tossing them, along with the sausage, into the soup, which made it taste smokey and delicious.

The fries were fried twice and fine.

same guy that owns Jimmys Place on Madison in Forest Park

KSeecs wrote:To me...those split open links look like a travesty. In both pictures they look dry as can be. If you are smoking a sausage there is no reason it should ever bust open to that extent, unless the temperature is way too high.

I agree..i was going to say that they do not look good at all

deke rivers wrote:same guy that owns Jimmys Place on Madison in Forest Park

Jim owns both places? I did not know that.

What's somewhat disconcerting is that Jimmy's Place has never to my knowledge offered smoked items nor owned a smoker, so what we may have here is a crew still getting used to the process and equipment.

deke rivers wrote:same guy that owns Jimmys Place on Madison in Forest Park

NO; from Anne Fisher's post above: "The college kid behind the counter is a nephew of the owner and pit-man--it's his father who is still the cook at Jimmy's Place in Forest Park. "

i find it weird that they only offer ribs and tips..where is the brisket and pulled pork???

pamiela wrote:

deke rivers wrote:same guy that owns Jimmys Place on Madison in Forest Park

NO; from Anne Fisher's post above: "The college kid behind the counter is a nephew of the owner and pit-man--it's his father who is still the cook at Jimmy's Place in Forest Park. "

who is also part owner of jimmy's place and owner of the bbq place as stated..maybe nephew will pipe in and confirm or deny

deke rivers wrote:i find it weird that they only offer ribs and tips..where is the brisket and pulled pork???

...and chicken and links. That's pretty standard Chicago BBQ--from the aquarium smoker down to the slices of Wonder-like bread to the menu.

i believe Honey 1 , Smoque, and even Sweet Baby Rays offers the " 4 food groups"..which includes pulled pork and brisket...

G Wiv wrote:

KSeecs wrote:To me...those split open links look like a travesty. In both pictures they look dry as can be. If you are smoking a sausage there is no reason it should ever bust open to that extent, unless the temperature is way too high.

I have not been to Smokin M's, but did wish to point out that cutting links lengthwise just prior to service is a fairly common style decision amongst BBQ joints, Lem's for example. I mean this as simply a data point, if Hammond says astoundingly dry, I'm thinking Sahara.

David Hammond wrote:My whole chicken looked pretty good…but it wasn’t quite cooked, very chewy and stringy. I took a lot of it home, but The Wife made me dump it. It was red at the bone, not pink from the smoke, blood red.

Though the chicken may simply have been undercooked, another possible cause of red at the bone is much of the chicken we consume today is quite young even though, due to various hormones and breeding techniques, they are market size.

Often the bone is underdeveloped and somewhat porous allowing marrow to seep out through the bone. The red marrow, especially in conjunction with color from the smoke ring, can give the impression that fully cooked chicken is undercooked.

Info about chicken, bones and blood, along with a few mildly gross pictures, can be found here

Enjoy,
Gary

gotta agree Gary..even properly smoked chicken can have red at the bone..but the tough to chew and stringy along with the red makes me think this was in fact undercooked

deke rivers wrote:i believe Honey 1 , Smoque, and even Sweet Baby Rays offers the " 4 food groups"..which includes pulled pork and brisket...

Honey 1 does not offer brisket as a regular menu item.