There is a shortcut to barbecue, and it is the reason most “BBQ” in Europe tastes like roasted pork with ketchup on it. You can cook a rib in ninety minutes in an oven and glaze it until it looks the part. What you cannot do in ninety minutes is render the fat, break down the collagen and let the smoke settle into the meat. That takes time, and time is the one ingredient we refuse to buy our way out of.
What “low and slow” actually means
Barbecue is not grilling. Grilling is high heat and a short conversation with the fire; barbecue is low heat and a long one. We hold the pit low — low enough that a brisket needs the better part of a day — and we let the meat come up to temperature slowly. Somewhere in the middle of that cook the temperature stalls and refuses to move for what feels like hours. That stall is not a fault. It is moisture evaporating off the surface, and it is exactly where the bark forms and the connective tissue gives up.
By the time a brisket leaves our smoker it has been in there up to sixteen hours. The ribs take less, the pulled pork sits somewhere in between, and the Floridian chicken is faster still — but none of them are rushed, because the moment you raise the heat to save time you get a tougher, drier piece of meat that no sauce can rescue.
Cherry wood from Valais, Swiss meat, nothing else hiding
We smoke over cherry wood from Valais. It is a fruitwood, so it burns sweeter and gentler than hickory or mesquite, and it gives the meat a deep red-brown colour instead of the acrid edge you get from oversmoking. We use 100% Swiss meat, and we trim and rub it ourselves. The buns are brioche, the pickles and sauces are made here, and the only thing we keep secret is the BBQ sauce recipe — which is the one question we get asked more than any other.
100% Swiss meat · 100% American BBQ · 100% smoked in-house.
How to eat it
If it is your first time, the honest answer is to order a sharing platter and stop worrying about doing it “correctly”. BBQ is designed to be put in the middle of the table and argued over. The Holy Trinity (pork rib, brisket, pulled pork slider — 43 CHF per person) is the shortest route to understanding what we do; The Carnivore (49 CHF per person) adds rib tips and Floridian chicken; The Insatiable (74 CHF per person) adds beef rib and fried chicken and is what people order when the table cannot agree.
If you would rather build your own plate, our smoked meats are sold by weight — beef brisket at 15 CHF per 100 g, pulled pork at 12 CHF, Floridian chicken and fried chicken at 13 CHF, bacon back rib at 18 CHF per piece. Add mac & cheese, slaw or cornbread with honey butter and you have the same meal a pitmaster would make for themselves.
Where to find us
We are at Rue de la Madeleine 8, 1204 Genève, in the middle of the old town. We open Tuesday to Thursday from 12h–14h and 18h30–21h, Friday from 12h–15h and 18h–22h, Saturday continuously from 12h–22h and Sunday from 12h–21h. Monday we are closed — the smoker gets a day off too. Reservations are through the booking link on this site, and pick-up orders run through our online ordering page.
One warning: the Wall of Flame is real. Start mild, work your way along the shelf, and keep a milkshake within reach. There is no shame in stopping halfway.
