Beach Hill Smokehouse serves its brisket, ribs and chicken 'central Texas-style'
Beach Hill Smokehouse is located at 172 Main St. in Toronto
With the final weeks of summer well underway, one of the frequent questions I receive is: "Where can you get great barbecue around the city?"
Two months ago when I wrote about RD Barbecue, I mentioned that 10 years ago, our barbecue options in the GTA were limited.
RD shines the light on Tennessee-style cooking and centuries-old Cajun and Creole traditions, and thankfully there are other styles of American barbecue wonderfully represented in other parts of the city, but you'll have to venture out of downtown to get to them.
You won't find good barbecue restaurants in the downtown core for a few obvious reasons: rent, real estate, logistics that come with slow cooking large chunks of meat that requires room-sized smokers. Then there's the risk of complaints from neighbours who may not be happy with the perpetual scent of burning red oak. So if you want good barbecue you'll need to embark on a short barbecue pilgrimage.
I first discovered Beach Hill Smokehouse during an eating trip earlier this spring. A friend of mine who lives in the Beach Hill neighbourhood was showing me some of his favourite Caribbean spots. During our meal we were talking about barbecue and he suggested we alter our plans and drive down the street to this new barbecue place. He went off on a rant about how the barbecue is world class and as good as the stuff in central Texas.
In plain sight Beach Hill Smokehouse can be easily missed since the restaurant is located in a low-rise strip mall across from the East Toronto Sports Field at the base of the Main Street overpass. It's steps from the intersection of Main and Gerard.
Inside, a loud country playlist set the soundtrack to some of the best Central Texas-style barbecue I've found in the GTA.
"Central Texas way, meaning we don't use any sauces. It's all about the rubs," Terrance Hill told me as he pulled out a parcel from the oven, wrapped in butcher paper. As he slowly unravelled the paper, the intensity of smoked meat increased. Seconds later he started to slice a large slab of meat, black and crusty on the outside, and pink on the inside.
The true test of great barbecue in my opinion is smoked brisket. An unforgiving slab of fat and meat that can easily be over smoked and overcooked. Hill's brisket is juicy throughout. Hill starts the cook on the brisket in the evenings, smoking it for 12 hours over red oak. The brisket is a must when you visit Beach Hill.
Hill is the pitmaster at Beach Hill Smokehouse, a restaurant he co-owns with Darien List.
"We used to play college football together. Then we found out years later that we're actually related," List explained.
The duo met at Grambling State University in Louisiana in the early 90s. While they went their separate ways with their careers — List went to study law, and Hill became a software engineer — they managed to keep in touch through a mutual love for barbecue.
"I was a software engineer by day, but I was trying to learn how to barbecue by night. Darien would visit me and we would have some of the best barbecue in the south," Hill said.
He spent most of his adult life infatuated with the traditions of southern barbecue.
"I've spent many years learning from my uncles, touring through Alabama and learning from pitmasters," he explained.
Through many hours of learning slow cooked traditional barbecue, Hill discovered that Central Texas was his preferred style of cooking, where dry seasoning is preferred over thick coatings of sauce.
"Classic brisket is only salt and pepper. The rest is technique. Terrance has mastered that technique over the years," List said.
A decade ago, List moved to Canada to be with his wife and they run a daycare service together. For the past five years, he's been trying to convince Hill to bring his barbecue north of the border.
"Darien was insistent that there would be a crowd for my barbecue here, so we did a test meal last year, a popup for 150 people and they loved it," Hill said.
"You could say that this restaurant has been 20 years in the making" List said.
Beach Hill's menu is filled with hits. To properly experience it gather three friends and order the pitmaster's platter.
Start with the brisket, and then work your way through Hill's German and Czech-style smoked sausages.
The chicken is one of my favourite things on the menu, Hill smokes the chickens whole under low controlled heat to preserve their juiciness. When it arrives, each piece is plump and superlatively smoky.
Then there are the sides and desserts. Hill's right hand is chef Rod Bowes. He rotates a list of sides and desserts that are exemplary, better than most barbecue restaurants I've visited.
If you're lucky, Bowes will have two types of baked beans on the menu, one that is a bit more classic with a thick gravy, and the second is loaded with slices of sausage and brisket trimmings. Get the loaded beans, they're incredible.
There's also Bowes' take on mac and cheese, a gooey dish kicked up with hits of jalapeno.
If it's on the menu, get the bourbon banana pudding to finish. It marries that tropical nature of banana with the deep woody and smoky qualities of bourbon.
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