Smoke Shack BBQ & Burgers Pompton Lakes — Restaurant in Pompton Lakes

This restaurant offers a rare mix of superb service, excellent food, and very reasonable prices; a true 5 star experience.

We stopped in for a late lunch with our picky toddlers. They enjoyed their fish and chips and chicken nuggets. I tried it as well and it was perfectly cooked and seasoned.

The owner improvised kiddie cups for our toddlers' apple juice (and I'm grateful that they offered apple juice in the first place).

I was craving a Nashville style fried chicken sandwich and described my craving to the owner. He improvised a delicious spicy dry rubbed fried chicken sandwich which satisfied my craving and more.

My husband ordered the BBQ chicken and sliced lean brisket. The chicken was very tender and delicious. The brisket was lean and tender.

My husband also ordered three diet cokes and they were brought out one at a time with perfect timing to ensure that he had cold drinks to wash down the food.

The sides were all great too, highly recommend the mac and cheese and buttered corn.

Overall, our lunch visit was a total hit and we will definitely return when we're in the area next.

(The witty comebacks to the bizarre negative reviews warrants a sixth star.)

Please open a location in...

Don’t be fooled by the “4 star” Google rating, as I was. My wife and I thought we’d try this small, casual BBQ joint hoping to find a diamond in the rough. Instead we found an amateurish attempt at classic BBQ. The brisket was fatty, the St. Louis ribs were very tough, the coleslaw was watery and the BBQ sauce was watery. The meat had little smoke flavor and no sign of smoke rings. The lack of flavor and tenderness tells me the meats weren’t smoked long and slow. I’ve had great BBQ in Texas, Tennessee, the Carolinas and many other states, but our search locally continues. BTW, the burgers and pulled pork looked good, but it’s not what we ordered!

P.S. The manager responded to my review with snarky, nasty comments. Instead of taking responsibility for the substandard quality of his food he chose to belittle my opinion. He’s smoking something good, but it’s definitely not the meat! Being in business for six years doesn’t give them a get out of jail free card for the bad food they serve today. This place is gaining momentum … like anything else...

for someplace called smoke shack i really struggled to find the smoke. i’ll start by saying we didn’t go the burger route, and maybe that’s their thing. we got a sampling of the bbq meats—chopped chicken, pulled pork, spare ribs and brisket. i’m really curious how these meats are cooked because there truly wasn’t a hint of smoke in any of it. it was all nice and tender (even if the brisket was dryyyyyy) but you could look at it and tell it’s not smoked…not a smoke ring in sight. also, everything (including beans and “coleslaw”, which was broccoli slaw) was extremely almost sickly sweet and left an aftertaste because of it. and the cornbread is worth a pass.

so this is based on our personal tastes, which is why i gave them 3 stars. it obviously suits other people’s tastes, but when it comes to what’s called barbecue, we want it smoky, so we were excited to try it but overall it was really disappointing. probably wouldn’t eat again except maybe to...