Carolyn Fath Ashby
Wings are the way to go, pictured here with mac ’n cheese, Brunswick stew and a brisket sandwich (lower left).
Barbecue is all about signs. Some are literal, like a neon pig. Others are less literal; think of what you learn from a line of hungry acolytes out front, or a pink ring on the cut edge of a brisket, or that smoky smell in the air.
There’s no column of smoke rising from Doc’s Smokehouse, and certainly no line out front. (This isn’t Austin, though, let’s be real.) There’s a smiling pig on the logo, though. Doc’s may be a regional import, hailing from Dyer, Indiana,but its earnestness works for Madison.
The bar stocks a rickhouse’s worth of bourbon, plus 60-some tap lines for beer and cider. There are plenty of TV screens, tuned to a variety of sports. And there are wings.
A friend exhorted me to try the wings, and I regret nothing. They’re dry-rubbed and flash-fried, and when they arrive at your table you’ll quickly understand why Doc’s explicitly suggests leaving the sauce off. They don’t need it. A little salty, a little brown sugary, kissed with smoke and just enough crunch, a plate of these wings is a literal finger-licking-good moment.
In fact, if your meat of choice once flapped a wing in its pre-barbecue days, chances are good you’ll enjoy it at Doc’s. Both chicken (pulled) and turkey (sliced) are available, and of the two, the chicken fared slightly better on a juiciness evaluation. If the turkey was a touch dry, it at least wasn’t tough. Dryish turkey is perfect for Doc’s turkey pot pie soup, an occasional special. Exactly as advertised, it’s all the best stuff inside the crust of a pot pie, eaten with a spoon.
The most satisfying feature of the many soups at Doc’s, whether the pot pie soup, a thin and beany brisket chili (Texas, don’t shoot the messenger), or an excellently peppery Brunswick stew, is that they come out piping hot. This is not the case for just about everything else, save the spicy-sweet baked beans. Doc’s holds its meats at a fairly low temperature, which prevents them from drying it out, but the trade-off is that nothing arrived at my table hotter than just above lukewarm.
This is a real liability when the burnt ends, a Sunday special, are hefty two-inch cubes of varying tenderness. Coming out hot would soften them up nicely, and the same could be said for the very meaty ribs, which didn’t want to pull away clean from the bone in spite of a pleasant degree of smoke. A massive Friday beef rib special — called a “dino bone” sold out in less than an hour of dinner service on my Friday visit. Our server told me the kitchen is still figuring out how many to prep to meet demand.
Brisket, always a standard tool of barbecue measurement for me, comes in the Central Texas style at Doc’s, relatively unadorned. I appreciated the follow-up question, “fatty or lean,” not something that pops up in Wisconsin very often. Fatty is the obvious choice, and the slim, baconesque ribbons were tender and ringed in pink, with crunchy bark.
Carolyn Fath Ashby
The peanut butter pie is a worthy meal-ender.
I enjoyed the Usinger’s sausage, which is also part of an appealing starter platter of pimento cheese and saltines, but wish it was a little less Wisconsin and a little more East Texas — more snap, more grease, more spice. More, generally, is what the smoked onion dip also needs. It tasted mostly like French onion dip, which is to say not smoky at all. And the less said about the wan, slippery, bland, leathery smoked salmon, the better.
Ending a barbecue meal with dessert is often an exercise in belt-loosening, but the house-made peanut butter pie is worth it, creamy and luxe. A thankfully raisinless carrot cake square could stand to be more moist, but cream cheese frosting and candied pecans absolve minor bakery sins quite adeptly.
There are five sauces at each table, but none are truly essential. Tangy goes well with chicken, and Sweet is nice with sausage, but most meats didn’t beg for saucy additions. While it’s available, though, do pair your barbecue with a Funk Factory Meerts; pale, tart, and a little fizzy is a top-notch pairing for any smoked meat.
Doc’s Smokehouse
72 West Towne Mall; 608-821-0439; docsbbq.net;
11 am-10 pm Mon.-Thurs., 11 am-11 pm Fri.-Sat.,
11 am-9 pm Sun.; $6 - $33
