Smiley’s, Austin-style craft barbecue, trades in the Airstream for a new food hall
A brand-new food hall in Roanoke just landed a very big prize.
Former Austin barbecue pitmaster Brendan Lamb is moving his Austin-style Smiley’s Craft Barbecue to the new Oak Street Food & Brew hall, 206 N. Oak St.
Smiley’s moves up from a roadside stand in Ponder, where it became a popular stop for craft barbecue between Denton and Fort Worth.
Now, Smiley’s becomes the first craft barbecue in the Roanoke-Westlake area and an anchor of the new Soul Fire Brewing Co. project, a block north of Babe’s Chicken Dinner House.
Lamb, a former pitmaster at La Barbecue in Austin, serves the closest anyone has come yet here to East Austin-style, meltaway-soft brisket with a peppery bark.
His jalapeno corn and mac-and-cheese have been impressive, too, along with the bacon-chocolate chip cookies.
Smiley’s old Ponder location had an Airstream trailer and a lot of character. Sometimes, passing trains stopped so the engineer could run over for a bag of sandwiches.
But it didn’t have indoor seating, so it was steaming hot in summer. Lamb pulled up stakes there last month.
“The trailers were extremely hot,” Lamb said, calling the Roanoke location, a former crafts and antiques mall, a “perfect fit.”
The mall’s old look and booth setup feels a little bit like where Pecan Lodge started in a Dallas farmers market.
Lamb said he hopes to open by late November.
Popular local chef Sage Sakiri has already opened two restaurants in the food hall, Churchill’s Fish & Chips and Famous Fatso’s Burgers. The hall will hold a total of six restaurants and a coffee stand.
Churchill’s serves beer-battered cod with a choice of sides and desserts such as fried candy bars or fried apple pie with ice cream.
Fatso’s has a long list of burgers such as the “psychedelic” mushroom-swiss burger and the “Famous Fatso” bacon-jalapeno cheeseburger. (It’s not related to the former Fatso’s in Arlington.)
Both restaurants and the mall are open for lunch and dinner daily; 817-991-9890, oakstreetfoodandbrew.com.
This story was originally published October 30, 2019 at 5:45 AM.
