As the semester winds down, I returned to an old friend of a restaurant, Stacks Pancake House on Washington Street, which you might know for their warm, fluffy pancakes, abundant salads, and busy brunch atmosphere. I still remember one evening summer after freshman year when I went to Stacks and a parade seemingly came out of nowhere (Fun Fact: the Hoboken Memorial Day Parade is not held on Memorial Day, rather the Wednesday before). But I didn’t go to Stacks for breakfast or something resembling a light lunch. I went for dinner. As long as I can remember, Stacks has been known for being packed to the gills in the morning, with the crowd gradually trickling out until it’s a ghost town by dinnertime. For the past year, Stacks has been trying to buck that stereotype and, as a part of that attempt, started offering a “Smokehouse BBQ” menu through the dinnertime rush. After seeing the sign for some time, I figured a visit was in order to prove, once and for all, if a pancake house can do barbecue.
With the entire restaurant to ourselves, we started off with some of Stacks’ signature cornbread (complementary). It’s still as good as always, light and fluffy but with plenty of corny deliciousness. Moving on to the appetizer, since we were there to sample the barbecue menu, an appropriate appetizer was a “Bloomin’ Onion” dish with chipotle dipping sauce. My first reaction was that the chipotle sauce was hotter than I’d expected, but overall the onion pieces, while a bit stuck together at times, weren’t particularly greasy, a common trap for fried dishes.
On to the main course! Since we were there to sample all of the barbecue, we decided on a combo plate, which included chicken, ribs, and brisket, with sides of house-made coleslaw and a loaded baked potato. After splitting up the sampler plate accordingly, we dug in, and oh my goodness. The beef brisket was perfectly cooked, enough so that the meat is firm, but not so much that it’s too tough to cut up and eat; the darn thing melts in your mouth. Same for the ribs; I’d be going out on a pretty sturdy limb by saying they may have been some of the best ribs I’ve eaten in Hoboken. Only smoked with no slathering of barbecue sauce to send you scurrying for the wet naps, they were extremely tender but not falling off the bone, flavorful and delicious. It wasn’t until after finishing the ribs I realized our waiter had also brought over an array of barbecue sauces to try. With regard to sauce, they have their traditional barbecue, a tangy blend, and a sweeter sauce, all of which were plenty good. It was honestly a good thing I’d found the sauces at that point, because unfortunately they became somewhat of a lifesaver with the chicken. While the ribs and brisket were excellent, the chicken was the one drawback to the sampler plate. In short, since I don’t like to dwell on negative points, the skin itself was very heavily seasoned and the chicken underneath was definitely on the dry side. With the addition of sauce, the chicken was pretty good, but it was the only part of the plate that needed it.
As for the sides, Stacks put quite a bit of effort into the baked potato side. I don’t know why I was expecting the potato to still be wrapped in foil, but it was actually served as its own dish, with the inside of the half-potato hollowed out and refilled with potato mashed with bacon, cheese, and chives; it was absolutely divine. Same for the coleslaw. From trying a lot of sandwich and barbecue establishments, apparently it’s really easy to screw up coleslaw. Stacks hit it right though; cabbage was fresh and crisp, and marinated in the traditional vinaigrette-sauce-whatever-it-is (patent pending) properly. It’s also important to note they don’t skimp on the sides, so I’d recommend sharing.
Stacks also offers a number of desserts, but by then we were happily satisfied. In the end, with the tip, we spent about $20-25 per person, not particularly unreasonable, but a bit on the pricier side for barbecue. In the middle of dinner, we were struck by this question: Is it sacrilege to each barbecue at a pancake house? It’s a fair question, deserving of a fair answer. And while they do still (as always) offer all their pancake specialties at all hours of the day, their pretty darn good barbecue menu does make them a dinner destination. So, no, barbecue at a pancake house isn’t sacrilege; not when it’s this good.
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