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Smalls, you might have heard, is the tiny Filipino-Korean barbecue/fried chicken joint in Irving Park started by the folks behind the Brown Bag Lunch Truck. It’s one of those road-to-brick-and-mortar feel-good stories that is one of few nice things to come out of the mess the city made of the food truck ordinance. Smalls’s Joaquin Soler painted a tight kitchen space just off Irving Park Road bright aqua blue to distract attention from the middling strip of sports bars on the main drag, installed a Southern Pride smoker, and began smoldering brisket, pulled pork, and Saint Louis spares over cherry and hickory wood.
- Mike Sula
- Saint Louis slab, Smalls
It’s taken me a while to write about it because I had to be won over. The brisket on my first visit was terrible. Served chopped, it was dry and difficult to choke down, and you could tell by the clean, angular cuts in the meat that it probably hadn’t spent much time in that Southern Pride. The pulled pork was dry and smokeless too, but the ribs, heavily rubbed and lightly glazed in a sweetish sauce, developed a crusty bark, a respectable smoke flavor, and maintained a texture that wouldn’t insult the strength of your mandibles. It was that slab that gave me hope.
Mike Sula
Brisket bibimbap, Smalls
Mike Sula
Smalls Smoke Shack & More
*The erstwhile Lost & Found Lounge, once the city’s oldest lesbian bar.
