A slow-burning superstar

Amazing American-style smoked barbecue, cult doughnuts and a ceviche to sing about – Smoking Barrel offers big-city quality in Motueka, says Alastair Paulin.

Iknew the Smoking Barrel for its doughnuts, I came for its slow-cooked barbecue but I was smitten by its ceviche. The sprawling restaurant was jam-packed on a balmy Motueka Saturday night. The front was open to the street with tables spilling onto the pavement and a line of people snaked to the front counter. We were thankful we’d made a reservation but when the hostess scanned the book, there was no sign of it.

No problem, she said. With no fuss she moved a reserved sign from a booth and set it up as a two-top.

Our waitress Emma guided us through the onepage menu with good knowledge and advice. They were out of the 500g “Flintstone” T-bone and had subbed in a 400g ribeye and if we liked ceviche, she said, then we’d love their version, which was the “fresh catch of the day” special on the starter menu.

This was a generous bowl of cubes of West Coast swordfish marinated in lime juice, with fresh mango, pomegranate, orange, cherry tomatoes, chilli, coriander and red onion topped with fried shallots. Ceviche can be one-dimensional but this dish was a story with a beginning, a middle and an end.

At first I was carefully constructing bites, trying different combinations of ingredients. The pomegranate seeds, contradictory crimson bursts of sweet tartness, were an inspired addition, but all the ingredients were top-quality and each mouthful sang.

I moved on to mowing through mouthfuls, savouring the interplay of the flavours and marvelling at the perfect balance between the citrus tang, the sweet fruit and the firm flesh of the swordfish.

And then my spoon found the avocado cream at the bottom of the bowl, which added a silky texture and cool counterpoint to the riot of high notes. This was one of the best dishes I’ve ever eaten. Our other starter of jalapeno firecrackers was chillis stuffed with cream cheese and flash-fried. They were salty, spicy, perfectly fried bites of tongue-tingling goodness, with the cream cheese cooling the palate. An ideal accompaniment to my pint of Riwaka’s Hop Federation’s Red IPA, one of my favourite beers, although I sneaked plenty of sips of my wife’s excellent frozen grapefruit margarita as well.

The drinks list was small but well chosen, showcasing Nelson wines and even Motueka port but finding room for interesting outliers like a Spanish tempranillo. (The cocktails also sounded delicious but I was driving.)

The menu includes Mexican dishes such as pork tostadas and fish tacos and most of the dishes feature the slow smoked meats from the importer American smoker on the back porch.

A quarter slab of barbecue pork ribs had been barrel smoked, braised for five hours and then chargrilled with a smoky, tangy, tomato-based sauce. The meat was falling-off-the-bone tender but the rest of the plate – a basket of thick-cut fries and an apple-fennel-mint slaw – was underwhelming. The fries were floury, not crisp, and the slaw was insipid.

I had the barbecue tasting board, which included 14-hour barbecue smoked beef brisket, pulled pork shoulder, buffalo wings, soft rolls, dipping sauces and pickles. The brisket was outstanding, with a deep, rich smokiness, and it was perfect on a buttered soft roll. The 14-hour apple smoked pulled pork was also excellent, although I wish I’d had it as part of a tostada, and the Sriracha wings were spicy and moist.

Luckily some friends joined us for cocktails and I could share the smoky goodness because I couldn’t have finished the board by myself.

Our guests also gave us an excuse to order a couple of desserts. I had high hopes because the Smoking Barrel has become justly famous for its decadent doughnuts, which are long sold-out by evening time. Surely the pastry chef behind those would produce great desserts. But perhaps because diners are too full of smoked meat to order dessert, the list was small: a choice of naughty Snickers, gingerbread, affogato or sorbet.

The Snickers sounded good but didn’t really work. A lava cake was topped with a dry shortbread that was hard to get through, and the proportions were wrong: the syringe of bourbon salted caramel sauce didn’t hold enough to make much impression on the lava cake. The trio of sorbets were undistinguished, with the exception of a tangy passionfruit.

But the vibrant decor, excellent service and world-class standout dishes had been such a success, a disappointing dessert didn’t dampen our mood.