‘Wednesday to Saturday: Brisket Pulled Pork St Louis Ribs’ reads the sign in the lounge.
Well, it’s to the point. Hand-painted by Smokey Dave himself, it is a no-fuss, just-the-good-stuff hint that things have changed at The Robin Hood.
Pub kitchen residences can be remarkably fruitful things, and mutually beneficial. Spread the risk of running a premises of your own, assess demand while you grow, bring in punters somewhere they might never otherwise visit: and with lower overheads, the kitchen can feed you well for less. It worked handsomely for Hang Fire Smokehouse at Splott’s The Canadian, and more recently Rob Hills’ compelling Orchard Road takeover at The Seadog (review here) has served me some of my favourite dishes of 2024.
The Robin Hood is a very un-‘Pontcanna’ pub, an unreconstructed boozer mercifully free of the sort of people logging Zadok’s Dirigible Scrotum (Experimental Release #6) on their Untappd app, or types who think beers should be named after Pavement B-sides. (“Two-thirds of Westie Can Drum DIPA please…Oh, and a Baptist Blacktick when you’ve got a minute…’) So settle in, ask for a pint of Wye Valley’s subtly sweet, malty Butty Bach and enjoy the fact you’re in a proper pub, a local with regulars and quiz nights and definitely not somewhere ‘designed’ to within an inch of its life, or with social media emphasising that the staff are such a bunch of wacky funsters, aren’t we just ker-azzzzy, wot larks eh chums. And don’t forget the Scampi Flavour Fries, because you’re not an animal, are you?
The music from the bar drives the point home. The Wizard of Oz soundtrack, Chas’N’Dave, Chicory Tip, Mary Hopkin: there’s nothing ‘curated’ about it, and it’s all the better for that.
The old joke is that if a bomb went off here, it would set Cardiff’s food back years: time it right and you’ll find some of the city’s leading chefs and their teams, or the people manning our busiest street food operations by day, all having a pint and a laugh-moan about the state of things. Only an easily-missable sign on the wall as you pass in the street hints at what’s going on here now.
Now in its third week, Smokey Dave’s brings a menu of barbecue classics to Pontcanna. It lists wraps, buns, dirty chips and homemade burgers, but the main thrust here is smoked meats. That makes sense, of course: a seven year stint as head chef at nearby The Smoke House means it must have been an easy decision for landlord Paul to hand over the kitchen to Dave.
He has set up his trusty old smoker from The Smoke House- now it sits outside, which posed some problems with winds sucking out that precious heat, but remedied by improvising a flue from an old beans tin, apparently- and the yield is something to celebrate.
The pulled pork is twelve hours’ worth of smoked Boston butt, but I’m leaning toward the brisket. No, not literally. Tangy, well spiced, lavishly juicy: nicely seasoned chips and a coleslaw whose cool temperature and textures are just the thing by contrast. Fat pickles (ridged, for your pleasure) round out a very satisfying £14 worth: a pound for every hour it has spent in the smoker, time and money very well spent.
Pork belly impresses, too. It is expertly done, impeccably tender and impressively proportioned: five hours well spent, from rub to smoke to glaze. It’s the sort of thing which reminds you powerfully that the good stuff isn’t always easy to find, and that patience and skill can work magic. If there’s any justice, that rub should be sold for home use: some goes into the sauce, bringing a gentle but insistent heat. This needs bottling, too- by turns sharp with vinegar, then rounding into spicy, rich and intriguing with treacle, demerara, mustard- it is instantly compelling.
It is, quite clearly, the work of someone who gives a shit, and who thinks you deserve to eat well.
Smokey Dave’s feels like a man getting back to what he loves, and finding joy in that freedom. Recently I’ve felt a little jaded with describing what seems to me an increasingly predictable local restaurant ‘scene’: and yet here I am rushing to tell you about a pub kitchen takeover free of any gloss, any social media deluge, any ‘date night inspo’ Instagram reels.
Unpretentious, understated, but quietly satisfying: Cardiff will always need places like this. I know I will. Now, go and make those tables annoyingly hard to nab, please.
Smokey Dave’s at The Robin Hood
Wednesday to Saturday 5pm to 10pm (until 8.30pm Thursday)
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