Smoke & Moonshine Authentic Barbeque

The smoke is the argument here. Smoke & Moonshine cooks its brisket and ribs over sugar maple, finishes them with a garlic-and-pepper dry rub, and lets that combination set the terms for everything else on the menu. The result is a King Street smokehouse in downtown Beamsville that reads first as a kitchen serious about its cooker — pulled brisket, dry-rub ribs, double-smoked burnt ends, smoked wings, brisket gravy ladled where it counts — and then keeps going well past where most barbeque stops draw their line.

The centre of the menu is exactly what the name promises. Ribs come dry-rubbed, brisket arrives pulled or chopped down into burnt ends that get a second pass through the smoke, and the wings are smoked rather than fried. For a table, the Moonshine BBQ Platter does the heavy lifting: dry-rub ribs, pulled brisket, double-smoked burnt ends, mac and cheese, cornbread, baked beans, and fries on one board, enough to keep a group from splitting into separate mains. It is the order to reach for when nobody wants to settle on just one thing off the smoker.