The smoker is at the heart of The Stockyards Smokehouse and Larder, but the life of the wood-fired beast began long before the St. Clair West, Toronto, restaurant opened in 2009.
Seven years earlier, Tom Davis, the restaurant’s founder, spent months poring over equipment plans and calling manufacturers before constructing the smoker out of 12-gauge steel. Soon after, it was put to the test, smoking 450 pulled-pork sandwiches at a local food-and-drinks show. “I wasn’t even sure if it was going to work,” said the 40-“ish”-year-old, with a cheeky grin, “but thankfully it did.”
Davis was getting a taste for his dream of opening a barbecue restaurant, an idea that had been simmering for more than 10 years as he worked different serving and catering jobs. In 2007, he was living in Toronto’s St. Clair Avenue and Bathurst Street area, when he noticed a neighbourhood restaurant for sale and made an offer. When he was outbid, he began scouting real estate again until a year later when he received a phone call from the new owner who was selling. They made a deal.
“I started crying when I saw the disgusting, dirty grease pit [it was] when we came here,” Davis laments. “It took about two weeks of cleaning, 20 hours a day. My friends helped, we drank a lot of beer and got it cleaned.” With scant start-up funds, the entrepreneur scoured online listings for cheap, used kitchen equipment while collecting other items such as a vintage coke machine, kitchen lights as well as cast-iron pans from a restaurant-closing sale. “This steel griddle cost me $309 off eBay — it’s $32,000 new,” he says, proudly gesturing to the discount purchase. “It cost me $1,500 to ship it from Missouri, and we didn’t even know if it worked.”
Luckily it worked, and, today, the Stockyards Smokehouse and Larder is one of Toronto’s most buzz-worthy restaurants. Local culture newspapers such as Now magazine and Post City have dubbed it “number 1 in barbecue” and the “tastiest fried chicken” in the city. And, diners are buzzing about their experiences at the restaurant, making it one of Yelp’s most-reviewed restaurants in the city, with 211 write-ups.
It’s garnered big buzz, but the restaurant itself is tiny. With only 1,500 square feet, including the kitchen, the 18-seat resto seats guests along a long wooden bar, where they can watch their food being prepared. Davis estimates he serves 300 diners a day, bringing in $7,000 in sales on Saturdays and Sundays, the busiest days of the week. Eighty per cent of his business, he adds, is take-out.
Greasy goodness
Open six days a week, the Stockyards serves breakfast daily, starting at 9 a.m. Diners can order fresh homemade buttermilk biscuits, deep-fried poached egg sandwiches and fair-trade, organic Reunion Island coffee; brunch is served on weekends. Once evening hits, the restaurant becomes clogged with diners waiting to pick up orders of fried chicken, barbecue ribs ($26 for a whole rack), pit-smoked chicken ($14) and gourmet sandwiches.
But it’s the 48-hour brined and marinated fried chicken and wood-smoked Carolina-style barbecue that attracts crowds. The catch is barbecue menu items are only available on Tuesdays, Fridays and Sundays, since it can take up to 18 hours to smoke brisket, pulled pork, bacon and sausages.
The chicken is brined in a salt-and-sugar mixture then marinated in buttermilk and spices for 24 hours. Next, the chicken is seasoned with flour and fried, before being served on a cast-iron skillet with crispy shoestring fries, coleslaw and hot sauce ($14). For brunch, customers enjoy a spin on traditional fried chicken and waffles; in this case, fried chicken is served atop Belgian waffles and smothered with homemade chili maple molasses citrus glaze ($13).
Burgers are another source of pride at Stockyards. A top seller is The Classic, a six-ounce butcher-shop custom grind made with 50-per-cent chuck, 25-per-cent brisket and a 25-per-cent “other” undisclosed cut of beef. It’s griddle-smashed and topped with butter lettuce, house mayo, ketchup, pickles and onions ($7). Another popular burger is the Beast Style, which Davis describes as his version of the Animal-Style burger from American chain In-N-Out; it includes two mustard-seared beef patties, served with secret sauce, caramelized onions and American-style smoked cheese ($14).
One of the few items Davis is content to outsource is buns, which are from Dempster’s. He explains: “You want a white store-bought squishy [bun] for a classic burger,” because artisanal buns take the focus away from the meat.
His staff also blends homemade drinks such as limeade, made with mint, fresh lime juice, sugar and water or iced tea, made with earl grey tea, ginger, sugar, water, lemon and classic fresh-squeezed orange juice.
No Frills
Davis, who has experience in high-end dining, describes the style of his restaurant as barnyard chic. “I didn’t like the stuffiness. People want to come out and have good food,” the restaurant owner observes. So, the Stockyards delivers traditional comfort food, with a mom-and-pop dining experience — where fresh ingredients reign, innovation is the norm and consistency entices diners to return.
To Davis, it’s also important to cultivate a workplace where his team of 14 employees is free to express themselves. “No uniforms,” he emphasizes. “We let our personality shine through. You want your employees to take ownership, and we try to instill that in them.”
Self-expression is especially important to Davis who has spent the last 20 years exploring his heritage. “I’m from a mixed-race background, and I’m adopted,” he says. “We’re not sure if I am a Jamaican-Canadian or Nova Scotian-Canadian or an American-Black-Canadian mixture. Part of this whole thing is my journey, finding out where I come from culturally and ethnically through food,” he explains. So, that’s why his evolving menu, which changes on a whim, has featured a selection of down-south barbecue and even Nova Scotian cod cakes.
Reflecting on the past four years in business, Davis is proud, but he has new insight about past decisions. “If I could do it again, I would simplify the menu by half,” he says. In the meantime, he’s itching to open an express version of the Stockyards that’s run by three or four employees and offers a menu of fried chicken and burgers.
The restaurant’s fame has been a pleasant surprise for the man who started making his own luck the day he built his own smoker. “I honestly thought it was going to have four employees [and make] $1,000 a day,” he admits. “It’s gone tenfold on that. You just can’t conceive what’s going to happen.”
