The Sunset’s hot new BBQ joint is putting brisket in a bao

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There’s good and bad news about the Sunset’s hot new restaurant Smokin’ D’s BBQ. 

First, the good: The restaurant has brought hard-to-find Texas-style barbecue — smoked “slow and low” over indirect heat — to Irving Street. It’s also slinging fluffy, baseball-size, barbecue-pork-filled Chinese bao, which are so popular that often hundreds are sold in mere hours. 

The bad news (for stodgy purists): The restaurant doesn’t offer a classic version of either thing. 

If you’re not committed to tradition, however, there’s plenty to love about Smokin’ D’s, which made the jump from farmers market stand to proper restaurant in early August. The menu pulls inspiration from owner Daniel Ramirez’s Texas upbringing and Mexican American background, as well as wife Lareina Chu’s Asian-American heritage and roots in the Sunset.

Ramirez, who’s from Houston, started Smokin’ D’s in 2021 out of their home on Noriega Street. “I had a hankering for a brisket sandwich,” he says, “and there was nothing in San Francisco that reminded me of home.”

So the backyard barbecue master decided to make it himself with a custom smoker from Texas and a classic Texas-style recipe that calls for little more than salt-and-pepper rub and lots of time. First, he sold brisket sandwiches and mac ’n’ cheese out of his garage, to great success. Later, he started popping up Sunday afternoons at Standard Deviant Brewing, selling out in an hour. He still appears at Oakland’s Grand Lake Farmers Market on Saturdays and San Francisco’s Stonestown Farmers Market on Sundays.

At his bare-bones counter-service spot on Irving, Ramirez offers a brisket sandwich that comes on a brioche bun piled with bread-and-butter pickles and pickled red onions. In a nod to his Mexican roots, Ramirez also tops nachos with brisket — that and housemade queso, a Houston specialty. He plans to add breakfast tacos, loaded baked potatoes, and maybe a smoked pork-belly banh mi. Chu provides the recipes for sides, including mac ’n’ cheese and jalapeño cornbread. 

But it’s the two types of bao, Chinese-style baked buns, that are stealing the show. The OG Briskey Bao is filled with a quarter-pound of tender, peppery brisket, and the Korean Cowboy is filled with spicy, Korean-inspired pulled pork, which is smoked with citrus and mixed with a sweet-spicy gochujang sauce. It’s an understatement to say they are popular. On a recent Friday afternoon, just a few days after the soft opening, a queue of impatient customers inched down the street before the doors opened.

When I chatted with him later, Ramirez admitted that they were not prepared for the demand that day. “I said to my wife, ‘I don’t want to tell you, but, uh, there’s a line outside the door!’” 

While they’re settling into the space and their newfound popularity, Ramirez encourages diners to check the website and Instagram for opening hours. They’re figuring things out as they go. “The plan was never to open a brick-and-mortar,” he says. “But when this space became available, we jumped at the chance. I said, ‘Fuck it, let’s do it. We’ll figure it out.’”

The Standard suggests:
OG Briskey Bao: $9 
Korean Cowboy: $9 
Total: $18