NYCReview
Blue Smoke
This spot is Permanently Closed.
Editor's Note: The original Blue Smoke closed in 2020, but Blue Smoke’s Battery Park City location is open.
When I moved to New York in 2002, I did so in part because I wanted to eat in all the restaurants here. One place in particular was top of mind, mostly because I had read about it in Food And Wine or Readers Digest or some other “magazine” - a new BBQ spot from some young hotshot restaurateur named Danny Meyer. Two years later, fate had me living across the street.
To say that Blue Smoke is an Infatuation favorite would be an understatement. This restaurant is woven into my own personal history, and therefore the history of this website. I used to eat here at least twice a week, including on the first snow of every season, and for good reason. For the majority of the last decade, this was New York City’s best BBQ restaurant. That, and I apparently have a weird obsession with weather-related rituals.
Since those days, I have moved out of the neighborhood, Blue Smoke has had a chef change and a menu overhaul, and the NYC BBQ scene is a whole different thing. There are now at least five other viable BBQ joints around NYC, many of which only exist because Blue Smoke and the Big Apple BBQ Festival paved the way for them. Is it still the best in town? We’re not interested in having that conversation. All you need to concern yourself with is that the food here is still very good despite all the change. There’s still nothing better than walking through that door, smelling the smoke, ordering up a bourbon from their extensive selection, and eating meat until you want to die a little. Or at least until the snow gods have been appeased.