Back in April, You Gotta Eat Here made a stop at a local restaurant that I had never been to before. It took longer than it should have for us to make our way there, considering how often we drive past it, but their hours just don’t seem to mesh with ours. We were actually headed to a different restaurant when we passed it and realized that The Lancaster Smokehouse was actually open, so our dinner plans changed on the spot.
Our luck was actually pretty great on this night because a Mill Street Brewery representative was on site so all of their products were on special. Mill St. Organic is my very favorite beer and $5 pints made me very happy! We started with Texas fries as our appetizer. These are basically poutine, but use shredded cheddar cheese instead of cheese curds. Many restaurants would call this poutine anyways, but the true poutine lover knows that if there are no cheese curds then there ain’t no poutine! So good on ya Lanc, for admitting that what you serve is, in fact, not poutine. I suppose I should have been able to figure out that the serving of fries was going to be ‘Texas’ sized, based on their name, but sometimes I am not that quick! This plate was huge! I don’t know who could possibly eat them as an appetizer and still have room for anything else. Luckily we got these to share, but we still didn’t manage to finish them!
Since there are so many different delicious sounding meat offerings here, we elected to split a three-meat platter. We chose pulled pork, ribs and brisket. Cheesy grits and mac & cheese were our two choices of sides. The platter also included a piece of cornbread, that I actually liked! I had never had grits before, and I can tell you with confidence that I will never have them again. This is not to say that The Lanc does not do them well, they may have been spectacular for all I know! But I do know that it is not a dish that I have any fondness for. It was basically just a creamy slop. The flavour, but mostly the texture, just was not there for me. The mac & cheese, on the other hand, was a smokey, cheesy, bread crumb-topped bowl of tastey! And the meat! The meat was tender and moist. It arrived with a bit of sauce on it, but there were bottles of three different sauces on each table so you can add your own, as much or as little as you want. Personally, I prefer it when the sauce is cooked with the meat, I like when it gets kind of gooey and sticky. But this is a nice option for allowing everyone to mix up their favorite flavour concoction.
Between the two of us, not only did we not finish the fries, we didn’t finish the platter either! We spent $51.98 on the fries, the platter and three pints of Organic. Talk about getting you money’s worth!
THE FINICKY FOODIE 