Seth Sommerfeld
SmokeRidge's smoked brisket meatball pasta bowl, and the brisket French onion sandwich.
We're back with more recaps of the Inlander Restaurant Week 2022 experience, this time heading to Spokane Valley and the South Perry District.
Restaurant Week 2022 continues through Saturday, March 5, and there are still tables to be reserved at many participating eateries. Find more information about this year's 99 total participants and their menus — offered at $22, $33 or $44 per person — at InlanderRestaurantWeek.com, or grab the Feb. 24 edition of the Inlander for the printed event guide, which is also available at all STCU branches and Restaurant Week participants.
Restaurant Week 2022 continues through Saturday, March 5, and there are still tables to be reserved at many participating eateries. Find more information about this year's 99 total participants and their menus — offered at $22, $33 or $44 per person — at InlanderRestaurantWeek.com, or grab the Feb. 24 edition of the Inlander for the printed event guide, which is also available at all STCU branches and Restaurant Week participants.
SMOKERIDGE BBQ ($22)
11027 E. Sprague Ave., Spokane Valley, 509-710-3426; Menu served Thu-Sun from 4-8 pm
Sometimes when you’re feeling glum on a dreary, overcast Sunday afternoon, eating way too much barbecue in an old train is your only recourse. Thankfully, that’s exactly what Spokane Valley’s SmokeRidge BBQ offers.
After a couple overly late nights, a lost wallet and a bummer Zags basketball loss, I shuffled into the inviting choo-choo mid-day on Sunday (with SmokeRidge operating special hours for IRW) to overstuff myself with the restaurant’s intriguing options. Admittedly, there’s something a bit strange about going to a barbecue joint and not getting any straightforward basic staples like ribs, pulled pork or brisket. But SmokeRidge’s Restaurant Week menu doesn’t leave a stomach wanting.
The meal began with andouille sausage bites and smoked deviled eggs. While the sausage portion isn’t substantial, the andouille is wonderfully spiced. The accompanying tangy pineapple mustard offers a great flavor contrast to the meat (not a mustard-forward taste profile), but the appetizer also offers a great chance to sample SmokeRidge’s four house sauces: special mustard, spicy BBQ, mild BBQ, and sweet/mild BBQ. (My preference was a blend of the spicy and sweet.) The creamy deviled eggs hit the spot with a very pleasing smoke to them without that flavor profile being overwhelming.
For the main event, I went with the smoked brisket meatball pasta bowl and the brisket French onion sandwich with cilantro lime slaw. As a sucker for meatballs, SmokeRidge’s brisket version did not disappoint. The fist-sized ball of beef had a rich smoky flavor and was cooked so that it was still almost juicy. The pasta it’s surrounded by is neither here nor there, but that doesn’t matter too much when you’re augmenting it with chunks of the meatball.
But the real star of the meal was the brisket French onion sandwich. It’s the best sandwich I’ve had around town since moving back to Spokane last fall. The morsels of chopped brisket are melt-in-your-mouth soft, the roll has just the right hint of crispness, and the caramelized onions and au jus blend perfectly with the beef.
Things ended with apple crisp and traditional bread pudding. The bread pudding is incredibly dense (closer to a heavy cake in texture) and receives a loudly zesty accompaniment in the form of a creamy lemon topping (it’s not mild, so make sure you really like lemon before diving in). The apple crisp was a gem of oats and brown sugar goodness mixed with the freshness of the apples, though the crunchy layer was a bit difficult to attack with a fork. (SETH SOMMERFELD)
CASPER FRY ($33)
928 S. Perry St., 509-315-4153; Menu served Tue-Sat from 4 pm to close
Casper Fry is maybe the first restaurant in Spokane that I truly, truly, loved. And even though it’s changed chefs and menus in the time since I first tried it, it will always be a Restaurant Week necessity.
A busy night at Casper Fry — until the Gonzaga game started — and a reservation mixup meant we had to wait a bit for our table, but the hostess was clever enough to figure out how to swap some reserved tables to get us a slot quickly.
The kale salad, a first course option and gorgeous in a deep green, hit that perfect balance between delicate and tough, the hardy kale leaves hosting bright bursts of pomegranate seeds.
There was a lot of pickle skepticism at our table. But the fried pickles — not dill, blessedly — won us over. With a fast-food style paper sleeve and little dipping sauce container, like an elevated meal at Zips, the crunchy breading reduced the often divisive pucker of the pickles.
But my favorite was the ground pork pâté. Pork loves sweetness: The jalapeño jam topping was sweet without being saccharine, and zazzed up with a subtle heat.
We found a surprise winner in the entree section too. I liked the Josper-grilled duck — it reminded me of the way my mom would make chicken on our charcoal barbecue growing up — though the pickled grapes definitely had that pickle-fans-only pucker-factor to them. The “Hoppin’ John,” a bowl of black-eyed peas, white rice, and Andouille sausage was tasty, but the flavors were less intense than I’d hoped for.
We eyed the eggplant dumplings on the menu warily. I personally knew how cruel eggplants can be to the would-be chef, turning from inedibly hard to inedibly mushy in an instant. But the dish looked incredible when it showed up in a cute lil’ cast-iron skillet. And we quickly learned that, by turning and eggplant into the dumpling, you fix the eggplant’s biggest weakness, replacing what could have been a slimy outer texture with a crisp breading.
For dessert: The banana pudding and the sarsaparilla sheet cake was solid, but the true star was the chess pie. Think of a Dutch Baby turned into a pie, sitting atop a puddle of bourbon cream sauce. And then savor every bite. (DANIEL WALTERS)
Read more of our staff's Inlander Restaurant Week 2022 recaps here and here.
A busy night at Casper Fry — until the Gonzaga game started — and a reservation mixup meant we had to wait a bit for our table, but the hostess was clever enough to figure out how to swap some reserved tables to get us a slot quickly.
The kale salad, a first course option and gorgeous in a deep green, hit that perfect balance between delicate and tough, the hardy kale leaves hosting bright bursts of pomegranate seeds.
There was a lot of pickle skepticism at our table. But the fried pickles — not dill, blessedly — won us over. With a fast-food style paper sleeve and little dipping sauce container, like an elevated meal at Zips, the crunchy breading reduced the often divisive pucker of the pickles.
But my favorite was the ground pork pâté. Pork loves sweetness: The jalapeño jam topping was sweet without being saccharine, and zazzed up with a subtle heat.
We found a surprise winner in the entree section too. I liked the Josper-grilled duck — it reminded me of the way my mom would make chicken on our charcoal barbecue growing up — though the pickled grapes definitely had that pickle-fans-only pucker-factor to them. The “Hoppin’ John,” a bowl of black-eyed peas, white rice, and Andouille sausage was tasty, but the flavors were less intense than I’d hoped for.
We eyed the eggplant dumplings on the menu warily. I personally knew how cruel eggplants can be to the would-be chef, turning from inedibly hard to inedibly mushy in an instant. But the dish looked incredible when it showed up in a cute lil’ cast-iron skillet. And we quickly learned that, by turning and eggplant into the dumpling, you fix the eggplant’s biggest weakness, replacing what could have been a slimy outer texture with a crisp breading.
For dessert: The banana pudding and the sarsaparilla sheet cake was solid, but the true star was the chess pie. Think of a Dutch Baby turned into a pie, sitting atop a puddle of bourbon cream sauce. And then savor every bite. (DANIEL WALTERS)
Read more of our staff's Inlander Restaurant Week 2022 recaps here and here.
