SMOKESTAK

There is a smoker in the open kitchen and almost no sign on the door, and the brisket bun that came off a market stall in 2013 is still the reason to find it.

Why go

David Carter ran a barbecue stall from 2013 and opened this in 2016 down a backstreet off Brick Lane, where the Good Food Guide reports it is "found with some difficulty (signage is minimal)". The kit is the argument: "the monster smoker in the open kitchen", blackened walls, and furniture that "almost looks like it's had a few hours over the coals" (Good Food Guide). Carter has since co-founded Manteca with Chris Leach and opened OMA and AGORA in Borough Market, and took Restaurateur of the Year at the National Restaurant Awards 2025, but his stated aim has not moved: "I want to create restaurants where you get a banging product for not too much money" (Restaurant).

Order this / avoid

• Order: the brisket bun. Jake Missing's line on it has held since 2022: "almost definitely still the best meat between bread you can get in London." ref Crispy pigtails alongside, which he found "crunchy and moist."
• Avoid: planning on the whole brisket without pre-ordering it, and expecting a comfortable chair.

What locals & experts say

• Jake Missing, The Infatuation (January 2022), 8.4/10: "They're really into barbecue and smoking all kinds of foods (and surfaces) in the best possible way," with the brisket bun the headline. ref
• The Good Food Guide, band Good, delivering the counterweight in six words on the room: "very cool, and not very comfortable." Its note on the vegetarian options is equally direct, that "you would hardly describe Smokestak as a place of pilgrimage for vegetarians." ref
• David Carter, in trade press (March 2024), on why it exists at all: "When we launched SMOKESTAK in 2013 we were a bit late to the barbecue party. We did it because that's what we wanted to eat." ref
• Industry votes: none. All 589 rows in our London chef-vote corpus were checked and nobody names Smokestak. Carter, Restaurateur of the Year 2025, is not a voter in the corpus either.

Good to know

• Where: 35 Sclater Street, E1 6LB, a backstreet off Brick Lane. The sign is minimal, so use the postcode. Tower Hamlets registers the premises as Unit 11 Avant Garde on the same street.
• Booking: worth doing, and the whole brisket for the table has to be pre-ordered.
• Operator: chef-owner. Carter also has Manteca, OMA and AGORA, so this is a chef with several rooms rather than a group with several formats, and the price promise is his own.
• Drinks: rum punch, blackcurrant Negronis, and a couple of dozen European wines the guide describes as "of a natural bent."
• Hygiene: FSA rating 5, Tower Hamlets, inspected 13 August 2025, with hygienic food handling scoring 0, the best possible. ref

Jeff's take (his words)

Jeff saved SMOKESTAK with no note. His raw saved-places export carries an empty Note for this row, so nothing above is in his voice and no order is attributed to him.

Verdict (Chef Jeff ladder)

should-visit — Worth the detour for one sandwich. David Carter ran a barbecue stall from 2013 and put the permanent room down an unsigned backstreet off Brick Lane in 2016, built around what the Good Food Guide calls 'the monster smoker in the open kitchen'. The brisket bun that made the stall's name is still the thing: Jake Missing scored the room 8.4 and wrote that the bun 'is almost definitely still the best meat between bread you can get in London'. Whole brisket comes to the table pre-ordered, carved thick onto a tin plate. Carter's own stated aim is 'a banging product for not too much money', and he was Restaurateur of the Year at the National Restaurant Awards 2025, so the operator motive is a chef betting on a point of view rather than a group rolling out a format. It stays below the top rung on two honest counts: the guide's own verdict on the room is 'very cool, and not very comfortable', and not one of 589 London industry voters names it.