Polson, MT: A tip from a friend in Spokane sent me out Highway 35 to hook up along the east side of Flathead Lake. The mission? Taste the smoked Prime Rib at the East Shore Smoke House. It was out of my way, but the friend in question has opened and managed more restaurants than some people will visit in their lives. If he suggests a place, I’m willing to go out of my way.
The low-slung Smoke House now looks nothing like the pale blue building that used to house a German restaurant before Jim Bassett bought the property. “I don’t think there is a single thing in the restaurant that you can see that we haven’t redone,” Jim says with a grin. “I didn’t intend to do this much. Originally I planned to just open a hambuger joint.”
I, for one, am delighted Jim got carried away. The restaurant… both inside and out… invites you to forget what is beyond the gate and settle in for a meal in a space designed to be both visually intriguing and down-home comfortable.
There is bar and dining area outside and both are completely enclosed with tall log slab fences. The eating area offers welcome shade in the summer – much of it from trees and bushes carefully built around rather than removed. In fact, if you spend any time looking around before you dive into the menu, you’ll notice careful details and quality everywhere. The corrugated metal up in the eves was salvaged locally with Jim and his family digging much of it out of the ground where it was buried. And Jim designed and built just about every light fixture in the restaurant.
In addition to using this steer skull, he created another wall fixture using the old boiler door from the Lake City Home Bakery in Polson. Next time I come I might ask to sit inside near said boiler fixture for reasons of pure nostalgia. I worked as a short-order cook at the bakery during high school, and occasionally had to venture down in the basement near the old boiler for supplies.
Yet all the architectural love in the world can’t keep a restaurant open if the food is forgettable. Thankfully, Jim and his staff seem to know this.
Bassett did his homework for the barbecue, and Chef J.R. Daniels is turning out some great, straightforward food that begs for a cult following. Three days out and I’m already wishing I’d smuggled out several bottles of the their house-made rum barbecue sauce. It provides a sweet-savory counterpoint to the each of the meats I tried. This included their (1) chicken (2) chopped pork and (3) St. Louis style ribs as well as (4) their smoked Prime Rib. All four were cooked perfectly, still moist, and touched with a distinctive smoky tang.
The prime rib sandwich ($13.95) comes with whipped cream horseradish sauce, but the barbecue sauce was close enough to addictive that I felt compelled to slather it on the Prime Rib as well as on the chopped pork and St. Louis style rib.
The spot probably isn’t the place to host a convention for vegetarians, but feel free to drag along a couple friends who are avoiding charred beast. There are several good options absent the meat even if the most compelling culinary reasons to show up come out of the smoker. I plan to try the brisket next time, convince someone with me to order the smoked Prime Rib so I can steal a bite or two, and then I plan to turn my attention to the generous number of microbrews offered on tap.
