100 Favorite Dishes, No. 14: The Big Rib at Smoke

Leading up to this month's Best of Dallas® 2017 issue, we're sharing (in no particular order) our 100 Favorite Dishes, the Dallas entrées, appetizers and desserts that really stuck with us this year. Dallas has a lot of good beef ribs. Cattleack BBQ does a pastrami beef rib every so...

By Brian Reinhart

September 21, 2017

Smoke's Big Rib is served on a cheddar hominy casserole. Brian Reinhart

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Leading up to this month's Best of Dallas® 2017 issue, we're sharing (in no particular order) our 100 Favorite Dishes, the Dallas entrées, appetizers and desserts that really stuck with us this year.

Dallas has a lot of good beef ribs. Cattleack BBQ does a pastrami beef rib every so often; Pecan Lodge’s is a perennial stunner. But the Big Rib at Smoke doesn’t suffer for being served at a fancier establishment, and it’s just as good despite coming with a real plate instead of butcher paper. It’s a behemoth, for sure — enough to feed two people — and comes with a fantastic, herbacious green chimichurri sauce with enough heat and acid to help undercut the fabulous fatty richness of the meat. Underneath, there’s a blend of hominy and cheddar that brings the whole thing home.

Smoke’s Plano location closed this summer, and we saw some snark online about how Smoke is too frou-frou to last as a barbecue institution. We hope that’s not the case: Smoke does great work, and the Big Rib, which is available in limited quantities each day, is well worth the asking price.

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Brian Reinhart has been the Dallas Observer's food critic since spring 2016. In addition, he writes baseball analysis for the Hardball Times and covers classical music for the Observer and MusicWeb International.

Contact: Brian Reinhart

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Twitter: @bgreinhart