Smokehouse offers up skookum sandwiches with a side of love

Sweet! Doughnut lovers who discovered Cartems Doughnuts’ commissary and its auxiliary sales counter are finding out there’s more than doughnuts going on at this semi- industrial location.

The facility, Woodland Smokehouse and Commissary, at 485 Commercial Dr., makes and sells sausages, smoked meats, smoked fish, pickles, preserves and breads at this location. And from these ingredients, they make daily sandwiches. Skookum sandwiches. It’s run by the folks who operate Cobre ( which, by the way, lost its lease and will be moving to a nextdoor location) and Peckinpah BBQ, both in Gastown.

“Everything’s made in- house — that’s 15 or 16 sausages and salamis, hams, cured turkeys, smoked fish, pickles, preserves. We use all local, organic, free- range, happy animals. The fish are from Organic Ocean. Right now we’re smoking cod and halibut,” says Tyson Reimer, one of the proprietors.

Sandwiches include porcetta with pesto and grainy mustard, house smoked Black Angus pastrami with Dijon mustard and turkey ham with horseradish mayo and Dijon.

They took over the facility in July but with 10,000 square feet of gleaming, stainless- steel cooking and baking space, there was space enough to sublet to businesses like Cartems and Calabash restaurant to prep their food. Cartems sells their doughnuts there and Calabash will be soon offering Jamaican patties.

“It’s about love,” says Anatoli Belov, the chef who produces Woodland Smokehouse products. “It’s about doing what you are committed to, caring about the product and creating from scratch.”