One of my followers on Instagram and another on Twitter had suggested I visited Smokey Bones (“SB”). SB has been around since last year but had a proper launch in April 2015 according to one of their staff but I only just knew about it few months ago thanks to followers of the blog – Shoutout to our lovely readers!
I had seen some web flyers and stumbled on their website. The pictures looked mouth – watering and food looked very sticky just how I like it sometimes. Lol.
Went to SB on a Friday evening after work hoping to chill and have some good food. Locating this place took a while and I had to make a phone call to SB that we were struggling to find their spot. SB is in the corners of corners in VI and was almost like a treasure hunt.
Parking space is kind of tight here so if you plan on coming here, just be sure to have mad driving skills to maneuver your way in and out.
Walking into SB, they had this glass door with their logo on it which I thought was nice.
Apologies for the qualities of the pictures – it was very dark and we even had to request that the light was brightened up a bit which someone still came and dimmed it after. Ugh
There are three major sitting areas here – 2 open sitting spaces and 1 semi enclosed space. Smokey Bones is more of a lounge setting and that is explanatory from their website which classifies them as a ‘bar & lounge’. Not sure how I missed that memo and thought I could chill.
The chairs are extremely low and the tables as well. I had a feeling that might have been the case because the website didn’t particularly advertise it to be ‘fine dining’ or anything fancy. if anything, it had the feel of a glorified beer parlour with extremely loud music and lowly dimmed lighting. If that’s your thing, Smokey Bones is the right place for you
For starters, we had their BBQ Chicken Wings which comes in six (6) pieces with their BBQ sauce. There is the option to choose from pepper sauce, honey & mustard and of course, the BBQ sauce which we had.
This is what our chicken wings looked like –
but in their pictures, it looked like this –
Our waiter had promised the wings would be out in 5 minutes and instead this turned to 15 minutes and thanks to hunger, the complimentary nuts didn’t help. The wings were a bit tough to chew and did not look/taste fresh but the BBQ sauce was really good.
Five minutes later, the mains came out after the starters.
B had the T – Bone steak with Smokey special fried rice/Plantain (you can either have plantain or the rice or both) and the other meal was the grilled chicken with steamed veggies (carrots and cucumbers) and mashed potatoes. Both meals came with corn bread – this is a SB thing.
Sadly got no pictures of the T-Bone, because Hunger! The verdict was ‘it was just there’ according to B.
Grilled Chicken
The chicken was good and was very tender and well seasoned to the bone. As for the sauce, it was supposed to be gravy but in actual fact, it was just coloured oil and was very bland.
The mash which I agree was risky and this is because very few places do mash really well, had a funny twist and taste to it. It was not plain mash and neither was it buttery but instead had black pepper granules and had a very tingly and unpleasant taste especially combining it with the coloured oil.
It wasn’t great and It wasn’t bad. I’m on the fence on this one. Trying not to waste it, having the mash on its own was so salty and confused my taste buds and just ended the struggle by ignoring it.
The corn bread was nice as I’ve never had cornbread until the experience at SB. They tasted like freshly baked cupcakes with that maize feel and not so ‘corny’ in taste. I really enjoyed this.
In general, had a hard time enjoying the meal especially because of the extremely loud music and discomfort in posture that the seats gave, if you have a back problem, we recommend you take out your meal.
Breakdown is as follows:
- Chicken Wings = NGN 1,500
- T-Bone Steak with Smokey Fried Rice & Plantain = NGN 4,500
- BBQ Chicken = NGN 3,500
Who has been to Smokey Bones and what was your experience? Please share in the comment box below
Where is Smokey Bones? Smokey Bones is located at 8B Fabac Close, off Ligali Ayorinde (Behind Mobil House), Victoria Island, Lagos
Website: http://www.smokeybones.com.ng
Phone: 0802 609 5962