Beach Hill Smokehouse
Beach Hill Smokehouse is a Southern BBQ joint that offers a simple but truly phenomenal meat menu.
It's a spot for true carnivores, serving up meats covered in dry rubs of mixed salt, black pepper, and other delicious, secret spices.
Inside, the restaurant has rows of picnic benches that line the path towards the cashier in the back. You’ll soon come to realize the necessity of those benches after your meal: they’re perfect for sprawling across as your post-brisket brain fades into lethargy.
The back of the restaurant is where you'll find the 7,000-pound smoker from Texas barbecuing away along with Beach Hill's co-owners, Buffalo-native Darien List and Terrence Hill, a pitmaster from Dallas.
The two met in Louisiana on a football scholarship in University, only to find out later that they were distant cousins (yes, really).
This place is authentic as it gets with full rolls of paper towels at your disposal per table, loads of BBQ sauce, and sweet tea.
Smoked meats here are offered by the half pound, cooked with oak wood, the most commonly used wood in Texas. Meals come with loaves of simple white bread from the local bakery Cobs.
For family affairs, they have the Pitmasters Cookout ($100), which is 4.5 pounds of assorted meat with beans and potato salad included.
The handcrafted sausages ($5 for one-third of a pound) are concoctions of beef and pork: simple and tasty. The halal chicken ($7 for half) satisfies with juicy, tender meat.
Pork ribs ($9 for half pound) are sweet with a jerkey-esque flavour: a nice contrast to the intensely meaty palette. The brisket ($11 per half pound) is tender and moist.
The show stopper here is the gargantuan beef rib (around $12 per half pound) coated in a beautiful layer of bark. There's nothing like using your hands to bite meat right off the bone, especially if it's fatty meat rubbed in simple spices with a perfect pink ring.
Side orders of baked beans ($6 for a large) mix Heinz beans with Beach Hill's own sauces to give the dish a big boost of spice.
The Southern mac and cheese ($8 for a large) is simple in comparison, but portions are generous.
The poblano cole slaw ($6 for a large) is unexpectedly fresh. Bits of green pepper brighten up the veggie mix and the whole salad is creamy without being too thick. Save room for the peach cobbler: a dessert so good it might have you speaking in a Southern drawl for the rest of the day.
Hector Vasquez