It isn’t hard to find SMKD BBQ; simply follow your nose. Outside the new Henderson restaurant, a pitmaster fires up the offset smoker. The aroma of slow-cooked meats perfumes the air with a hint of sweetness from the post oak wood burning in the firebox.
The low-and-slow art of barbecue is rustic, but Top Chef alum Alex Reznik—who once beat Bobby Flay in a kosher cuisine showdown—likens the process more to baking.
“Once you’ve started it, you won’t know the result until after you’re done all the way. You can’t change it. You can’t taste it on the way,” says Reznik, who launched SMKD BBQ under his Ogden Hospitality Group late last year. “If I’m cooking, I can taste that my sauce needs more salt, needs more pepper. That smoker, it changes with the weather.”…