A year into its brick-and-mortar, Smoke & Donuts is staying lit and legit | Review

Food writers, if they’re interested in avoiding job hazards like heart disease, diabetes and/or having to be buried in a piano case, have to be strategic. Even when it’s hard.

And resisting a Salty Englishman — with its bourbon and maple glaze, its crumbled Heath bar and sea salt — is hard.

So, I cut myself one little piece. About a tenth. And as the fork went through that fresh-fried crust and the fluffy cake beneath, I could tell it was going to be a bite worth the calories.

I’m a sucker for good cake doughnuts. And this one, I later told Smoke & Donuts chef/owner Ian Russell, reminded me of the cider doughnuts at the Union Square farmers market in New York. So fresh. So airy. So good.

“Did you change them at all? Because it was even better than I remembered,” I told him. “What did you do?”

“I hired a pastry chef,” he said.

It makes sense. Russell is a rare sort of pit master: one with a Culinary Institute of America pedigree. That formal skills would resonate seems logical. And as February marks one year since this popular Orlando food truck put down brick-and-mortar roots in its vintage Milk District digs, so, too, does the idea of consistency.

“Sometimes I was able to make them like that on the truck,” he tells me. “Sometimes I wasn’t.”

These days, Chef de Cuisine Brett Vezina is the secret ingredient keeping the Englishmen salty and the S’Moreos toasty and the 16-or-so other varieties of doughnut, including the ones that get smothered in brisket burnt ends, flying off of the sheet trays on the daily.

Vezina, who came to Smoke & Donuts by way of the regrettably defunct Belanger Bagels, “has completely overhauled the whole doughnut program,” says Russell. “She’s the reason we have meringues on our doughnuts, and little branded logos, and pastry creams and pavlovas and little streusels on top.”

It’s just one facet of the evolution that S&D has undergone since Russell stopped worrying about his kitchen bouncing around on I-4 every time he had to go to an event.

His permanent home began its life in the late 1950s and retains its retro charm, its spare-but-warm look thrown together with intent. There’s lots of enduring character in this edifice. And lots of enduring flavor profiles in the meat.

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“Do you want marbled or lean?” the nice lady at the register inquires after my brisket order.

“Lean?! Why am I even here if I want lean?”

She laughs. “Okay, so you know your brisket…”

Maybe. But not more than Russell, whose menu draws on all the famed regions, from Kansas City to Texas to Carolina, which is where the pulled pork my lunch companion ordered sent me faster than a James Taylor hit.

His sandwich, with a mac-and-cheese side ($12), came dressed in snappy, sherry vinegar-based slaw with pickles and onions and, mercifully, nothing else. To be frank, pre-sauced pulled pork is sus. It’s why I don’t generally order it. Russell’s comes to the table in a lovely shred, redolent of garlic and cider and nothing else. It’s got nothing to hide.

You can sauce it, of course. Housemade varieties from hot to sweet to mustard to guajillo are there for the taking in self-serve squeeze bottles. And they’re good. But so are options. There’s even a spicy vinegar if you want more, but really, this sandwich, on its griddled Olde Hearth roll, doesn’t need a damn thing.

Neither does my brisket, though I do enjoy sampling the sauces as I graze. If there were an option for nothing but Russell’s stellar slaw and the little mound of pickled goodies to contrast all that buttery beef fat, I’d take it. But barbecue people do love those sides.

The boards (the brisket goes for $19) come with cornbread, plus two more, and if you must double down on the carbs, the mashed potatoes and gravy are a solid option. Immersion blended to silky-supreme with the added umami of beef tallow (because really, are butter and cream enough?) and capped with a pool of wine- and rosemary-infused gravy, they’re nothing you’re getting in your gram’s backyard after church. It’s a lot of cheffy fun.

Next time, I might go for the pit sampler (three meats, one side: $19). Because here, a “donut” counts as a side. Heck, I’ll just add the slaw for $3 and *boom!* The perfect board.

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All that said, you don’t have to spend $20 a plate here. Which is nice because good Q is hard to find and can cost a dang fortune. Fewer foodie bummers are bigger than dropping a boatload on barbecue that isn’t worth the scratch.

“We want a hospitality-driven environment that our friends and family can frequent,” says Russell. “it’s so hard to get real food crafted from raw ingredients to the public at a price that cooks’ friends can afford, but it’s important to us.”

Also, cooks know how to eat. The crispy pork slider ($5), a smash burger of sorts where sweet griddled onions get mashed down with meat before a slice of American goes over the top, was borne of Russell’s own, “What do I want to eat right now?” hunger. Pair this with some of those stellar green beans (actually brown butter-basted haricot vert bathed in Chilean merkén and a whisper of smoked salt), and you’ve got a CIA-certified meal for less than 10 bucks.

But wait, there’s more.

Trivia Thursdays, special events (like a Galentine’s Day Donut Decorating Class coming up on Feb. 13), weekend BBQ brunch and free doughnuts for kids on Tuesdays (literally any doughnut, even Vezina’s super-fancy ones) make it clear that Russell and his team are dedicated to bringing folks out for happy hours spent over food and drink. (Oh yeah, there’s a full bar here, too. Happy hour goes from 3-6 p.m., Monday-Friday with $3 craft beers, $4 wines, $5 mules, margs and more.)

Or, you know, swing by for a doughnut. Donut. Whatever.

“Wait, was I supposed to eat this whole thing?” cried my lunch bud when he realized he’d dogged 90 percent of the 90 percent of the Englishman I’d left over.

I nodded. “It’s all good.”

“Wow,” he said. “These are better than I remembered.”

If you go

Smoke & Donuts: 601 N. Primrose Drive in Orlando, smokeanddonuts.com

Find me on Facebook, TikTok, Twitter or Instagram @amydroo or on the OSFoodie Instagram account @orlando.foodie. Email: amthompson@orlandosentinel.com, For more foodie fun, join the Let’s Eat, Orlando Facebook group.