Drake BBQ

This place closed one year ago. Shame on Unilocal for not updating. We showed up here to a closed door and boarded up restaurant.

Out with the store, and in with the BBQ. Ever since I started watching season 4 of Friday Night Lights (my newest, deepest obsession), I have been craving pulled pork and beef brisket like nobody’s business. I can’t imagine there’s anything close to Ray’s Barbecue here in big city Toronto, but it looks like the Drake is testing the waters with their southern-​style shop.
While the joint screams hipster, the food is for anyone who loves slow-​smoked meat. Essentially you have two choices — pig or cow aka pulled pork or beef brisket. There is a third option called the ⁶⁰⁄₆₀ — 3 ounces of beef plus 3 ounces of pork. Daaaammmn.
Last Saturday night, me and my favourite brother-​sister superduo popped in for a quick bite. Granted that’s all you can do when there’s limited seating and a crowd. The guy behind the counter was nice enough to give us a sample. The pork is dipped in a vinegar sauce, and the brisket in a sweet, tangy barbecue sauce. I went with the pork with a small dollop of BBQ sauce on top. The sandwiches are served on soft little white buns with a little slaw. Eat it quick before your bun turns to mush.
There’s really not much else to the meal, except to add a bag of chips, some pickles, or a side of coleslaw. It’s not a culinary masterpiece by any means, nor is it even a complex combination of flavours — it’s just soft, tender, meat. Keep it simple, keep it coming. So good it makes me want to growl…
Grrrrr…eat.

Had a craving for BBQ today. Went into Drake BBQ to get my fix. The air was rife with smoke from the smoker. This is a good thing. Asked what time they closed. He said today forever :(
Now Drake BBQ was never the best in town, but it did have BBQ brisket above and Pork Shoulder last, worth ordering again.
If you did not know the Drake hotel served BBQ but have been to the Drake, then lay off the sauce.
Small menu focusing on quality. The guy behind the counter said they are closing to expand the Drake restaurant space but are keeping the smoker for the restaurant. This means potentially ribs, chicken and pulled pork and brisket, but we will see.

My husband and I were getting peckish but we didn’t know what we wanted so we didn’t know what to make.
I was heading towards something reliable when I drove by the Drake BBQ at Queen W/​Dovercourt. It opened in the late fall and we hadn’t tried it yet.
I got two sandwiches for take-​out …the Carolina pulled pork shoulder sandwich and the Texas chopped beef brisket sandwich.
There is supposed to be coleslaw on top of the meat/​under the bun. I’m not a fan of coleslaw so I got it on the side. We shared the sandwiches. The sandwiches were good. They were juicy and not dry at all.
We liked the beef one better (the pork one is really vinegary). For the size of them, they aren’t cheap … the pork sandwich is $ 7 and the beef sandwich is $ 8. You can get a combo for about $ 12 which includes a pop and a bag of chips or pickle or peanuts.
The whoopie pies were on the counter and I couldn’t resist. They were okay. I found the biscuit a bit dry and the filling was more like icing (I was expecting it to be lighter and fluffier).

I have only tried the ⁶⁰⁄₆₀ sandwich combo here and wasn’t really that impressed tbh. The sauces were way too overpowering in the sandwich and took away from the overall quality of the sandwich. For what you pay, you would expect more. The coleslaw was ok but nothing out of the ordinary. You could get the same thing from a grocery store.
I don’t know if I would come here again. I might give it another shot considering how much I love BBQs and sandwiches.

If there’s one thing that’s hard to resist for me, it’s trying out a new place for a delicious sandwich.
The place is located right beside the Drake Hotel and you can smell the BBQ from the street. We walked in to find out they have pulled pork and brisket sandwiches. They also have a combo sandwich called the ⁶⁰⁄₆₀ which is a combination of brisket and pulled pork.
I ordered a combo which came with a sandwich, a soft drink and a side. I ended up getting the slaw and a glass bottle soft drink!
When I got my sandwich it was smaller than I expected but looked really good. I’m not going to lie I was slightly disappointed. The sandwich was alright, it definitely wasn’t bad but it wasn’t as good as I was hoping. The sauce weren’t the greatest but the meats were alright. The slaw was decent but the best part of my meal might have been the glass bottle soda.
I’d come back if I had a craving but will definitely try to hunt down better places in Toronto and with all the great restaurants in the area it might be awhile before I come back.

Tried out @theDrakehotel BBQ today… now open on weekends from noon till late.
Basically you’ve got three options: Pulled Cow, Pulled Pig, or the ⁶⁰⁄₆₀ (60% of each in a combo sandwich).
Prices run between 6.95−8.95 for the sandwich alone, or add 3 bucks for the combo with a side and drink.
I’d recommend getting one of their pickles on the side for an extra 75 cents.
Got one of each sandwiches… the beef brisket was smoky, tender, perfect texture and spice. The coleslaw gave the sandwich a bit of crunch. Tip: eat it ASAP as your toasted bun will get sog up pretty quickly.
Pulled pork was a little more of a disappointment in terms of flavor… overwhelming vinegary taste. Maybe it was just that batch though.
Check it out now that its got a little more reasonable hours… but bring a 20, they don’t accept credit and the closest machine is the ATM inside the Drake Hotel (conspiracy???).
The Flickr has some great pictures:

Boy-​oh-​boy, do I ever feel let down. I actually went out of my way to go to this place one day when I was craving some good-​olé-​fashioned-​BBQ. Claiming to be serving it up in true Southern-​style, I thought that there’s no way this could go wrong. I’ve actually been to Texas and all throughout the Southern states on a fairly serious eating vacation, and lemme tell you something, The Drake and their lil’ BBQ place owe the great state of Texas and its surrounding neighbours a serious apology…
Drake BBQ has a slew of great reviews all over the Internet. Everyone on Unilocal,Twitter, and a bunch of TO food mags have been raving about the authentic, bad-​ass Texas and Carolina style BBQ they’ve had in this place. I’ve read so many good comments, that I figured I must have gone to the wrong place. Maybe, I thought, there was some other place that just happens to look exactly the same, on the exact same street, with the exact same type of food?
Nope… I was in the right place. It just sucked is all.
Because they have such a loyal following, I’m sure quite a few people are going to dislike what I’m saying here, but in all honesty, if you got served what I did, you’d be disappointed too. My Carolina pulled-​pork sandwich was small, dry, and amazingly enough, was completey void of BBQ sauce, which is a fairly important staple in a pulled-​pork sandwich. They must have had some BBQ sauce somewhere in there, but if they did, they didn’t offer it to me, and it certainly wasn’t on my sandwich. My coleslaw was even worse. It was incredibly bland and wasn’t much more than shredded cabbage with a slight trace of what I assume was salad dressing. Not to mention that this stuff was expensive! Two of those sandwiches and an itty-​bitty coleslaw-​plus tip of course-​cost over 20 bucks.
Welcome to The Drake BBQ; it’s BBQ with a side of pretentiousness. You don’t like it? Trust me. If it’s the same guy working behind the counter when I was there, then he won’t care at all. I asked if we could get some fries with our sandwiches. he just looked at me, shocked, and said, ‘I don’t want a deep-​fryer in this place’. Hey, I’m fine with the guy being pretentious and true to the stuff he’s making and how he’s making it, especially if it’s honest-​to-​goodness Southern-​style BBQ. If he truly was an artisan of the BBQ and the smoker, he can rightfully be as pretentious as he wants as far as I’m concerned. I probably would have answered back with an agreeing ‘Yes Sir’! But the true kick-​in-​the-​ass was that the stuff that I ended up taking home in a sad little brown bag was basically less than edible. In fact, I only took a few bites and ended up throwing it out, which is something I never, ever do. Someone went and filled thsi guy’s head with the thought that this is actually what good BBQ is all about; someone lied to him.
Besides being about honest and delicious BBQ, the Southern states are all about hospitality and genuine people; people that would never be rude or unwelcoming. They’re more likely to invite you in for dinner than they are to turn you away. Drake BBQ was none of those things. The service was rude, inhospitable, and unwelcoming. From the moment I walked in, I felt as though they wanted me the hell outta there. That is, except for the older guy that handed me the bag. He sent me off with a sincere sounding ‘thanks for your business’, which is something I think businesses don’t say enough these days.
Like I said, this was painful for me. I felt ripped off. I felt sad. I felt let down. It was a just a plain bad experience that was nothing close to true Southern BBQ or Southern hospitality. In fact, I don’t think I would even give it another go, and whether you’ve been exposed to true Southern BBQ or not, I’d suggest you don’t either, because you’ll feel let down either way too.