Smokestak

The Verdict

Smokestak is one of the most direct yes-books in East London: a Michelin Bib Gourmand holder for two consecutive years (2024 and 2025), a £££ price point that keeps pace with its Brick Lane neighbours, a barbecue operation serious enough to anchor a whole evening around. The brisket alone justifies the trip. If you want technically precise meat cookery without a four-figure bill, book here before anywhere else in this postcode.

What Smokestak Is

Walk down Sclater Street off Brick Lane and you will nearly miss it. The signage is minimal by design, the entrance gives little away; which is part of what makes the first impression of the interior land so hard. A monster smoker dominates the open kitchen, blackened walls absorb the light, the weathered wooden furniture looks like it has spent a few hours over the coals itself. The room is cool, deliberate, not especially comfortable. That is the correct trade-off for a place at this price.

Smokestak opened in 2016, growing out of a street-food background that still shows in the way food arrives: tin plates, glossy buns, pickled chillies on the side. The signature move is the whole pre-order brisket, priced at £175 at last report, served in thick slices for the table or tucked into a bun with pickled red chillies. The low-and-slow overnight cook produces the kind of yield that makes the price reasonable when split across four or more people. Native-breed pork, pulled with green slaw in a bun, follows the same logic. These are not complicated dishes. The point is the technique, the technique is sound.

The menu is not exclusively carnivorous. Watermelon salad with feta, cucumber and mint, coal-roasted aubergine with red miso and cashews are genuine options rather than afterthoughts, though this is not where you should bring a committed vegetarian looking for a starring role on the plate. The drinks list earns its keep: rum punch, blackcurrant Negronis, a selection of beers, a couple of dozen European natural wines. It is not a destination drinks programme, but it is well-matched to the food and priced to encourage ordering.

The Late-Night Case for Smokestak

Where Smokestak outperforms most of its East London peers is as a late-evening option. The buoyant atmosphere the venue is known for does not peak at 7pm and fade; the smoky warmth of the room, the looseness of the service style, the format of the menu (sharing plates, buns, punchy drinks) all suit a later sitting better than a formal dining hour. If you are coming off another evening commitment in the City or Shoreditch and want to eat something genuinely good without navigating a tasting menu or a kitchen that closes at nine, Smokestak is a practical answer. The two sharing menus mean you can arrive, order, be eating within minutes, no extended ceremony required.

The service team is described as friendly and on-the-ball, which at a venue running a busy room in this neighbourhood is not a given. For groups using this as a second stop on a longer evening, the format works: order the brisket in advance (it requires a pre-order), add a round of smaller plates, the table organises itself.

How It Sits in the London Barbecue Picture

The Bib Gourmand, Michelin's signal for good cooking at accessible prices, puts Smokestak in a clear peer category. At ££, it sits considerably below the city's Michelin-starred meat options and holds its own on technical quality. For the explorer looking to map London's serious low-and-slow BBQ territory, Smokestak is the established reference point, the venue that others in this category are measured against.

David Carter's connection to nearby Manteca (co-founded with Chris Leach) is relevant context for those tracking East London's culinary geography, but it does not change the booking calculus here. Smokestak stands on its own output. If you want to understand what Shoreditch-era barbecue looks like at its most developed, this is the address.

For the food and travel enthusiast building a serious London itinerary, the internal logic is: Smokestak for weeknight or late-evening meat cookery at a fair price, venues like The Ledbury or CORE by Clare Smyth for the occasions where the full-format experience is the point. These are not competing options, they serve different decisions.

Explore More of London

Smokestak sits within a broader East London dining circuit worth mapping. For the full picture of where to eat, stay, drink across the city, see our guides: London restaurants, London hotels, London bars, London wineries, and London experiences.

For serious meat cookery at this price tier in other European contexts, Carcasse in Sint-Idesbald and Damini Macelleria & Affini in Arzignano are worth noting. For the broader UK fine dining picture that contextualises what Smokestak is deliberately not doing, The Fat Duck in Bray, L'Enclume in Cartmel, Moor Hall in Aughton, Gidleigh Park in Chagford, Hand and Flowers in Marlow, and hide and fox in Saltwood represent the field Smokestak opts out of, by design, to its credit.