Smokin' Dave's BBQ and Taphouse

While my husband and I were vacationing for a long weekend in Colorado a few week's ago, we both had a hankering for some good barbecue. I am that type of person who always looks up restaurants and things to do while on vacation before hand, usually on TripAdvisor. Smokin' Dave's was one of the top five restaurants that I wanted to visit while in Estes Park and had great reviews.

And pulling into a backdrop like that, how could you not gravitate towards this restaurant to eat there? Even with an overcast sky, it was still a breathtaking sight.

We chose to get an appetizer since we were both famished, and ordered the Pit Master Sliders. These freshly made buns are packed full of meat, two with Carolina pork and two with the Texas beef brisket. They also come with a container of coleslaw to top the sandwiches off, and I highly recommend, even if you don't care for coleslaw like myself, that you top those sandwiches off with coleslaw. At your table you also have a variety of BBQ sauces (homemade of course) to choose from, and I added the mustard BBQ sauce to my sliders.

For dinner I ordered the Dave's Double. Now, I obviously didn't plan that very well on the trying different things area, because the two meat's that I chose were the brisket and pulled pork again. The pulled pork was my favorite. The smokey flavor was very pronounced and the meat was still juicy. The brisket was also good. The smoke ring on the edges of the slices just reminded me of how much time they actually put into cooking their meats on the smoker. I tried the meat with all of the different kinds of BBQ sauce and I would have to say, although I liked all of them, that the mustard was still my favorite. For my two sides I ordered the Southern corn bake, which was my favorite thing other than the cornbread on my plate. And I also chose Grandma's tater salad. The tater salad wasn't bad, but I hate a large mayonnaise based sauce and that is all that I could taste.

For dessert, my husband ordered the apple cobbler. The apples were very tender and I highly suggest ordering a scoop of vanilla because the cobbler melts the ice cream making it into an amazing creamy vanilla sauce.

I ordered the creole bread pudding that is baked with bittersweet chocolate and pecans, and topped with a whiskey cream sauce. There was I think a little bit too much sauce for me. It isn't thick, more of a watery type sauce, but had really great flavor. And a bite of everything together, including some whipped cream was perfect.

I highly recommend stopping here if you are in Estes Park, or near their other location in Lyons for that matter. The proportions, depending on what you order, are more than enough. We ended up taking most of our desserts and part of dinner back to the hotel with us. And nothing against the Famous Dave's chain, because they also have amazing food, but Smokin' Dave's might have beat you this time as far as the meat is concerned... Delish!

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Smokin' Dave's, Estes Menu