Que Is Cued Up for Smokey Goodness

Whiskey ‘N Rye — Solvang’s popular smokehouse known for barbecue classics, premier whiskeys, and glowing Yelp reviews — set its sights south last month with the opening of Que at the Santa Barbara Public Market. 

With a motto of “smoked slow and served fast,” owner Don Conner envisions this more casual, quick-service outpost as just the beginning of his restaurant offerings on the South Coast. 

He’s got a second sit-down Whiskey ‘N Rye, even bigger than the 120-seat venue in Solvang, that’s in the works in a “very, very high traffic destination in Santa Barbara,” and hopes to have that lease in place by early February, so stay tuned on that one. Meanwhile, the Public Market space is off to a great start. 

“One of the things that has really, I think, enhanced or accelerated our business in Solvang, and we’ve brought elements of it here, is when you look at traditional barbecue places, a lot of times it’s pretty much just barbecue on the menu, where you’ve just got ribs and brisket and you got a few sides,” explained Conner, as we chatted and tasted our way through the new menu at Que.

After researching barbecue places throughout the U.S. including Texas, Tennessee, and North Carolina, Conner found that while the meats were good, a lot of the side dishes were not. “So, we’ve been very intentional with all of our food items, not only just our smoked meats, but our side dishes, to really craft them to be very flavorful.”

An example is the BBQ bourbon baked beans, which have 15 different ingredients and four different beans in them. I found them very flavorful, and the dill coleslaw was also quite good, as was the rustic pasta salad. They also offer fries, garlic smashed potatoes, and a farm salad as sides, which I didn’t get a chance to try yet. I did, however, try a delicious street-corn salad, which is a little bit of a riff on elote, but with romaine lettuce, smoked tomato, Cotija cheese, spiced pepitas, pickled onions, and a tasty charred lemon vinaigrette in the mix. 

The mix of lighter menu items —  including a salt-roasted beet salad, a beautifully balanced grilled and smoky chicken sandwich with BBQ-marinated chicken and a terrific smoked tomato jam, and the moo-less burnt ends vegan sandwich made with smoked jackfruit and mushrooms — along with three different burgers (chili cheese, smokehouse, and California styles), and an assortment of smoked meats, including a melt-in-your mouth brisket, yummy pulled pork, and hickory-smoked baby-back ribs, are all part of Conner’s vision for a broad menu that keeps people coming back regularly. 

“In Solvang, about half of our sales are barbecue. The other half is everything else. It’s the salads; it’s the prime steaks; it’s seafood. … We realize that people aren’t going to eat barbecue once a week … but that’s why we added the salads. That’s why we added the three different burgers, all in the vein of barbecue,” he said. 

The irony of a primarily barbecue restaurant replacing the Public Market’s only vegan restaurant, Fala Bar, is not lost on Conner, who is particularly proud of the moo-less sandwich. “It’s a vegan sandwich, but it’s delicious. And most people, if they had it, would think the jackfruit is actually pulled pork because of the texture and because of what it looks like when you shred jackfruit, right?”

He continued, “You’ve had what, three vegan restaurants go out of business in the last 12 months, 18 months here, between Oliver’s, Mesa Verde, and then Fala Bar. I think people would like to eat healthy, and we have options for them to eat healthy. But when you narrow your whole focus to just a particular genre … you really narrow your ability to draw guests to your concept.”

Added Conner, “We try to be very creative on what we’re doing, and that’s why we kind of coined our own little term ‘the West Coast barbecue,’ because we’re trying to break away from the traditions in the county of Santa Maria–style barbecue, which is a completely different ilk that we typically don’t do. We want to bring a more elevated experience to it.”

Corporate Executive Chef Brian Aceves, who grew up in Goleta (his uncle is former councilmember Roger Aceves), went to Santa Barbara City College Culinary School, and is the former executive chef from Firestone, oversees the menu, which also includes a nice array of shareable items, including blueberry cornbread, jumbo chicken wings, loaded mac and cheese, brisket dirty fries, and brisket chili, as well as house-made chocolate chip cookies, sweet-potato maple cheesecake, and an on-theme chocolate smoked s’mores mousse that brings back sweet campfire memories on a plate.

With a background in business development and strategic planning for Disney, Conner, a resident of the Santa Ynez area, brings a kind of long-term vision to the table that’s unusual in the restaurant industry. “Our objective over the next five years is to build and have four to five full-service Whiskey ’N Rye restaurants,” he said. In addition to the lease in the works for location number two in Santa Barbara, he said he plans to “build out 12 to 14 of these fast-casual versions (with Que as the model), and that would spread anywhere from Camarillo as far north as Monterey and potentially into Central California as well.”

But for right now anyway, Santa Barbara Public Market has the bulk of his attention, and he couldn’t be more excited about his new location. “Santa Barbara is kind of the next launching point for us. And we felt, within Santa Barbara really, the only place that we thought would be ideal for our concept was the Public Market, not only because there’s been almost a renaissance or a regeneration of the Public Market over the last, let’s say, 24 to 36 months, just from an energy perspective and from an operator perspective. But it’s great for us to be in a place where we have other great restaurants around us. … A high tide raises all boats. And you know, to be in a spot like, like, the market here, where we also fill a unique niche, we don’t really duplicate other folks here food-wise. And it’s just a really great mix of concepts between Korean and hot chicken, our barbecue, and Mexican and Thai — it’s just a great mix.”

Que is located in the Santa Barbara Public Market (38 W. Victoria St.). See quesmokeshack.com.