🌞 Summer 2026 🌞 The BBQ Platter Party
They grill and smoke, so that we can feast. Irish BBQ Platter Parties are here!
Joe’s Smokehouse, a low profile and important new food venture, has quietly begun trading in North County Dublin, and Joe’s Smokehouse is creating the vibe.
What Joe Savage is doing is offering a new concept of weekend evening dining: this is Friday Night/Saturday Night Event Dining. Forget the takeaway, because Joe’s is a whole new riff on Destination Dining, except here it is Rolestown that is your destination.
Joe built his Smokehouse in a modest shed adjacent to his home in Rolestown, between Swords and Ashbourne, right smack in the centre of a necklace of densely populated North County Dublin. You could be deep in BBQ country in Texas. Or maybe deep in BBQ country in North County Dublin.
Open the door of the shed and the entire room is dominated by a huge trailer-top rig with multiple smokers, grills and fireboxes, the air perfumed with delicious aromas of smoke, meat and steel.
Joe earned his chops working with the influential team from Smokin’ Soul in Wexford, whose BBQ courses are the Holy Grail for bbq fiends. Pat and Jim of Smokin’ Soul also fabricate high end smokers and grills for restaurants, including Joe’s own custom-built set up.
And here’s the thing: Joe’s Smokehouse is a destination, but not a destination restaurant. Instead, customers order from a choice of Joe’s BBQ trays for collection in Rolestown on Friday and Saturday evenings. Make your choice, book your slot, chill the Zinfandel, get to Rolestown.
So, what to order? The evening we visited, writes William Barry, we enjoyed Texan pulled beef; Alabama chicken with yardbird sauce; pork belly with crispy crackling; and Texas hot link cheesy jumbo sausages from the sausage wizard himself, master butcher Martin Sikula of The Village Butcher in Rathdrum, County Wicklow. There are no other sausages like these sausages.
The provenance of the meats used is second to none. Joe is fortunate to have a farm-to-fork partnership with another specialist food business, just down the road. Old Stonewall Farm is a family farm operation producing higher welfare beef, chicken and pork under the stewardship of Joe and Teresa Collins. This is the kind of partnership Ireland needs in each and every county.
Joe prepares everything himself, breads, sides and coleslaws, ably assisted by young family members. He trained at the Ballymaloe Cookery School, and the time spent there has indelibly left its mark on him, for everything is achieved in a painstaking way. Just look at the careful preparation of those Hasselback potatoes, and taste the richness of the beef tallow with which they are roasted. Break the crust on those orbs of bbq bread rolls. Look at the slender crescents of coleslaw.
Joe attends to customers humbly in a way that only an owner who is testing out the parameters and possibilities of something completely new would. The pride he takes in what he offers is encouraging. I care that he cares.
Live Fire Feasting Directory
Pat and Jim are the main men in live fire cooking in Ireland. They build the best rigs, they teach the best BBQ classes, and each weekend they feed the nation with their bounteous barbecue boxes. You can go the whole hog and order one of their Banquet Boxes, but you can also pick and choose and assemble your own feast of flavours of pulled pork, bbq chicken, smoked sausage, smokehouse chicken wings (no others compare!). Make sure to get the good sauces, and the Pit Beans. Pre-order on Thursday for Saturday collection.
Between Thursday and Sunday the gauchos in Tango fire up the parilla, and offer Argentine-style live fire cooking which is unlike anything else in Ireland. The entrana and the asado are sublime, and grill maestro Cristobal has all the moves. Make sure to try those big Argentinian red wines with this sublime cooking.
Dirty Souls at Kinnegar Brewery, Letterkenny
There are eight good reasons to visit Kinnegar Brewery in Letterkenny between Thursday to Saturday, and those are the eight different Kinnegar brews offered on their ever-changing board each week.
But there is actually a ninth good reason to visit Kinnegar, and that is because Dirty Souls are cooking and serving their central Texas-style American BBQ each weekend. The team are slinging the good things from their 500 gallon offset smoker every weekend, from 5pm-8pm on Thursday, 4pm-8pm on Friday, and between 3pm and 8pm on Saturday. Get in line for your very own Texas trio of brisket, fine pork ribs, and some awesomely tasty hot links, including jalapeno and cheddar, nduja and brisket. A pint of Scraggy Bay, and all is well with the world.
Jason McAvoy at Glenbrook Farm
Jason Mc aka CorkBBQ runs 1 day BBQ courses at Glenbrook Farm in Glanmire, just north of Cork city. This important farm is run my Peter Twomey and his family and they supply their produce to many restaurants around Cork city as well operating their farm shop on Saturdays.
The course fee is good value considering the handsome spread everyone enjoys during the day, including Glenbrook Farm sausages,black pudding,lamb and pork belly.
This course will a perfect introduction to someone starting off to learn how to BBQ and Jason’s mission is to get as many people as possible outside enjoying learning how to cook. The course covered smoking and grilling over charcoal and it does also include gas bbqs, as well as preparing meats and salads using different rubs and marinades.
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