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Reviews
San Francisco Chronicle Magazine
Red Smoke Grill: This Pleasanton newcomer leaves its fast food neighbors
in the dust with delicious, lightly smoked Santa Maria-style barbecue.
Your first stop should be a tri-tip and blue sandwich, thin slices
of tender meat and melting blue cheese piled onto a specially made
roll. Other great options are the tangy pulled pork sandwich and
the lemon and garlic rotisserie chicken, a tender bird with crackling
skin and juicy flesh. House-made desserts are good too.
Diablo Magazine
Red Smoke Grill: In a sea of franchised sameness, Pleasanton's Red
Smoke Grill stands out as different. Set in a shipping center near
the intersection of Stoneridge Drive and Hopyard Road, this place
grills up beef, pork, and chicken meals that are anything but ordinary.
The specialty of the house is Santa Maria-style tri-tip.
According to owners Jim Painter and Ken Hinshaw, Santa Maria barbecue
harkens back to the cattle-driving days of this Santa Barbary County
town. Vaqueros enjoyed beef grilled over red oak--giving it a lightly
smoky, crusty, juicy flavor. Over time, tri-tip, that flavorful
triangular hunk of meat that loves the grill, emerged as the standard
bearer.
Another Santa Maria specialty are pinquito beans--small
pink beans that Chef Hinshaw gets from Santa Maria and simmers with
bacon, ham, tomatoes and garlic. The beans are just one of several
excellent side dishes; also try the roasted corn salad and creamy
cole slaw.
The menu doesn't always stick to Santa Maria traditions,
but blends Southern and Southwestn flavors with California sensibility.
The tri-tip and blue sandwich combines thin-sliced beef with blue
cheese, carmelized onions, and horseradish sauce on a specially
made roll. Other standouts include the rotisserie chicken, pulled
pork snadwich, and grilled chipotle prawns The one flat note sounded
with the pork ribs. Although tender enough to eat with a spoon,
they lacked smoky flavor, while the barbecue sauce had a creep-up-on-you
heat.
Painter and Hinshaw think they have a good thing
going and plan to expand into other locations. "We're trying
to put real food in front of people at a reasonable price,"
says Hinshaw. I'd take a profusion of Red Smoke Grills over another
McDonald's any day.
Red Smoke Grill makes its own desserts: bread ppudding,
creme brulee, and an excellent Southern-Style "Cocoa-Cola"
cake--a dense, brownie-like dessert patterned after the classic
Coca Cola cake but without the copyright hassle.
AOL CityGuide
Red Smoke Grill: Since May 2004, Red Smoke's tables have steadily
filled and a parade of white take-out bags has stampeded out the
door. "Good food does not have to be expensive," owner
Jim Painter says. He should know. Painter and his partner, Ken Hinshaw,
have 50 years of food industry experience between them. Here, they
bring their good-food-at-low-cost concept to "Santa Maria barbecue,"
the method that Central Coast ranchers have used to grill tri-tip
for more than a century.
Red Smoke's quality corn-fed beef could stand alone
with a little salt and pepper, but grilled in the Santa Maria-style,
it's historical. So is the rotisserie chicken, which melts in your
mouth like butterscotch. Every bite in the fresh corn salsa with
hand-cut tomato, cumin and cilantro tastes of wide open spaces.
Even the red beans taste like they were cooked over a campfire.
The ambience is "glassed-in-strip-mall"--you
place your order and pick it up at the counter. But the white crockery
is high-quality heft, as is the cutlery, and the wine glasses are
large and filled to the top. With good food and fair prices, these
people know what they're doing. Everyone else is figuring it out
too.
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