Tales had met my ears for a while about Sugar Rays Smoke House, but as it’s out at Dundonald (and a little bit out of my usual area) it took a bit longer than usual before I was able to go and sample it for myself. Luckily last week I found myself near and decided the time was now!
From the outside it looks like the rest of the units that are in the industrial estate/entertainment complex with a few colored lighting signs in the windows and a snazzy awning. Inside is decorated like a southern American BBQ diner – it feels like a cleaner version of the real thing. Service is swift and polite with our server being more than adequate and helping us get sorted as we had a toddler and baby in tow.
I order a raspberry ‘soda’ and it comes in a lovely jam jar glass with ice and straw. Very tasty! My one complaint is that the menu is a dinner menu, with dinner prices. Paying these prices at lunch seems a bit much and would definitely put me off coming for lunch again, probably best saving this for an evening meal. I had the chilli cheese fries and pork sliders with tobacco onions – basically 2 starters, but I combined them as I really wanted those chilli cheese fries!
The sliders were 2 small fresh glazed buns filled with delicious BBQ sauces that covered pulled pork, they were served in a plastic basket and the rest of the space filled with tobacco onions. The taste was great, smokey, slightly sweet and tangy. The pork was obviously cooked for a while and was succulent and juicy, a nice bite without being chewy. The buns were complimentary too, nice and fluffy with just a hint of sweetness. The tobacco onions were crispy and plentiful, a great addition to what would have been a hefty starter. The chilli cheese fries were slightly larger than I would have liked as I prefer the skinny fries usually associated with ‘Americana’. These were chunkier and covered in a tomatoey, slightly hot, meaty chilli, then coated in cheese and onions with a taco style sauce. The onions were partially fried and still had a bit too much of that fresh onion brashness that I didn’t like at all. They should have been fried off properly as eating them was like a paired down version of biting a raw onion. I removed these though and the rest was grand. A really beefy, cheesy, spicy dish that certainly would satisfy even big appetites.
I was impressed with my trip to Sugar Rays and it’s in my top 3 of this style of restaurant in NI, as I have been let down by some promising ventures that still aren’t getting the whole ‘smoking’ thing quite right, at least not to my taste. Despite my few criticisms it was a cut above and worth heading a few miles out of town for their great tasting BBQ.
