The Smoke Shop BBQ - Harvard Square

"Sunday morning around noon. 4-6 tables occupied from what I can see. I timed it and 6 minutes to bring me a glass of water and over 12 minutes to take my drink and food order. Not good from a service perspective. I ordered the Pit Crew which is a two meat combo. St. Louis ribs and chx wings spicy with fries and brussel sprouts as sides. The side sprouts were good but a tad salty and the side fries were very good with a good sprinkling of BBQ rub. The smoked wings were the standouts but the sauce while flavorfully spicy was way too salty. This did the wings a disservice as the wings were very delicately smoked and had a great smoked flavor and were very tender. Order wings with the sauce on the side and you cannot go wrong. The second meat was the St Louis style ribs. The sauce is very good, but... Here comes the rub: a sauce can hide many sins done to the meat (see french cuisine), and in this instance the ribs had no smoke or flavor except that which was imparted by the sauce. They had a good bite, relatively tender but no taste of their own - the sauce had its hands full. Since I am a fan of central Texas BBQ and a backyard smoker myself, the one rule you cannot break: if the BBQ needs sauce to taste good, it ain't good BBQ."

"Instead of being a maverick, it is sometimes well advised to just heed the advice of fellow foodies in certain areas of cuisine ESPECIALLY if they are absolute fanatics about it. Here, I was warned early during my move here that most - if not all - BBQ spots in the immediate area would be a letdown. It wasn't a case that they weren't good...but they were now missing an element of consistency of what made them once great. I obviously did not heed that advice and followed the other rule of thumb when it comes to BBQ. That is, be there when they first open as that is when the ingredients are often just off the smoke process and resting prior to being served. This way...nothing stays in hot hold for too long (or whatever holding process they choose to follow) that results in the meats drying out. So I placed an online order right before they opened thinking this would indeed be the case...and was absolutely wrong. I wouldn't dare say in the moment that I was served a reheat but it might as well be. Ribs were dry, brisket was really dry, and the pulled chicken was only edible after drowning it with the provided sauce. That in itself proved my fellow foodie right and I didn't want to tell him what had transpired to avoid the "I *told* you so". I am going to just guess that it was an off day. Everyone has one for all possible reasons. I'm going to sit this one out for a while and try again another time. In the meanwhile, I'll keep my hopes up that my fellow friend can be proven wrong by what this area has to offer."