Philadelphia Weekly

X marks the hot: Holy Smoke has traditional spicy barbecue fare.

Photo by Michael Persico

“You smell like smoke.”

After returning from a finger-lickin’ barbecue feast at Roxborough’s Holy Smoke, this is the first thing a friend I hadn’t seen in years said to me after we hugged. But the comment wasn’t delivered in the manner of your significant other after an ill-advised Saturday-night Marlboro binge. No—during dinner, the intoxicating fragrance of burning hickory, mesquite and red oak had assaulted my clothes, and I smelled delicious. The caveat emptor on Holy Smoke’s website, “If you don’t smell burning wood, it’s not real BBQ,” should read: “If you don’t smell like burning wood when you leave, it’s not real BBQ.”

My friend—I’ll call her Virginia since that’s where she lives—was eyeing me. Manic hunger glittered in her eyes. I felt like I was about to be nostril-molested like the guys on the Axe commercials.

Barbecue—real barbecue—tends to incite this kind of reaction. In the South, barbecue doxology differs from state to state, even county to county. Like how Episcopalians, Catholics and Methodists all agree on Jesus Christ, just not the other pesky details, the various ’cue schools agree on the transformative properties of smoke, just not on the presence of vinegar in the sauce, beans in the chili or whether pig or cow is beast préféré.

Tell me about this Holy Smoke place, Virginia implored. So I did: about the prices (cheap) and portions (huge); about the live music (a killer cover band plus a DJ) and beer list (the largest selection of Victory draughts outside the Downingtown brewpub); about the service (young but enthusiastic) and looks (Ground Round circa-1986). But mostly I told her about the barbecue, bolstered by Afro-Caribbean dishes and traditional soul food, and chef/co-owner Keith Taylor, an affable pit boss whose signature ’cue exhibits some wanderlust.

Purists might gasp at his polyamorous approach—how the falling-off-the-bone St. Louis ribs get dressed in tangy, vinegar-tinged Carolina-style sauce, but Taylor insists it’s a product of childhood summers visiting family, tasting barbecue “from East Texas through Louisiana and straight up 95.” Before working for everyone from Disney and Eric Ripert to Penn and the New England Patriots, the Nutley, N.J., native graduated from Cornell and the Culinary Institute of America. The schools taught him “how to be a chef, a manager, a businessman,” but it’s his grandmother Doris who gets credit for teaching him “how to make food taste good.”

In mostly Italian-American Nutley, where the Taylors were one of only a few black families, Doris became legendary for her Sunday barbecues. Young Keith paid attention, and the education shows today in sweet pineapple baked beans and juicy smoked Jamaican jerk chicken, made from a “very, very secret” family recipe.

With half a rack of ribs, steamed shrimp tossed in an Old Bay-like spice melange, an odd salad with candy-sweet basil dressing, disappointingly dry cornbread and two sides, the jerked half-chicken appears on the $19 BBQ for Two platter. The recipe might be secret, but allspice and clove asserted themselves candidly. Also from the Caribbean: frittered conch lollipops (golden outside but undercooked inside) surrounding a viscous pineapple relish flamed by ginger, Scotch Bonnets and other mystery spices.

There’s quite a bit of classified information at Holy Smoke: What, besides salt and sugar, is in the dry rub massaged into each item destined for the $20,000 smoking system; cheddar and fontina’s three mates in the ultra-creamy five-cheese mac-’n’-cheese; where, oh where, was my order of chicken and waffles?

The classic Harlem-born duo takes time, Taylor says. A full 12 minutes to get the breast, thighs and drums fried perfectly. A 24-hour brine kept the meat so moist, a ShamWow couldn’t sop up all its juices, while the thorough dredging in well-seasoned flour gave each piece its crackly, golden coating. The meat arrived over a fluffy Belgian, its pockets like reservoirs for the deadly good mix of soft butter, hot sauce, maple syrup and chicken drippings.

For dessert, there was a peach-berry “buckle” (like a crumble) and a chocolate cobbler with cayenne-candied walnuts; both were fine, but the calories would be better spent on another Harlem waffle or another rack of ribs. Fortunately, Holy Smoke’s portions are so outsized I left with two carry-out clamshells. Virginia gamely noticed.