Big Smokers has been a staple of Prague's gastro scene (at least of the TexMex/American variety) for years now, and has always been slightly craft beer-adjacent - but it became fully place/venue-worthy only recently, having launched a beer of their own. But let's get back to that later.

The place is a cantina-style restaurant, you start from the left side of the bar, placing your food order, and then you either make a tab or pay immediately, your choice right next to it. The service when ordering was mildly brusque, but depended on the person and nothing to begrudge them, they did their job well. The food is excellent - I had chicken birria tacos w/ broth and gumbo on the side and the tacos were excellent, the dipping broth maybe even more so. They don't always have them I guess, but rotate food. Plenty of smoker stuff to choose from I guess. The gumbo was according to my friend Paul, a chef from the States, what it's supposed to be - and pretty nice as well. Anyway, you can then move down the path and order beer. Vojta, manning the taps there, knows his stuff, plenty of experience (+1/1.5 on service here), but the selection was "limited". Initially there were 5 taps, now expanded with extra two (probably V's initiative). You'll see Clock, černý potoka, Chroust, Falkon and Zichovec, mostly but not exclusively their regulars. Recently they also created a beer brand - Tom Silva, named after Tomáš and Silva, the two founders. Bit pretentious in marketing, it aims to be an Urquell "clone", albeit with German hops - and they are having Chroust brew it at Clock. The beer itself is actually pretty good (as I'd expect from a Chroust lager), heavy hop aromatics, pretty much no diacetyl and heavy bitterness, somewhat too aggressive but I dig it. What I don't dig is the glassware - slightly bigger rocks glass with no volume markers... not sure how much I just paid 59/69/whatever for. 0.3l? Mkay, on the border between conceptual and silly and a bit cynical.

Anyway, here, you do get quality, especially for food, but expect to pay for it as well. Looking at its direct competition - it loses to Hell Smoke when it comes to beer selection and thus the slightly lower score here. The food, however, is well worth going for, and though I'm not thrilled to pay almost 18€ for a dish (and not the biggest meal in some cases) + side + small beer, I'll definitely revisit it at some point.

How to get here: Tram 14 (Vozovna Kobylisy) will get you to Dělnická station quickest, go forward to the intersection and right into Dělnická street, and you'll find it. You can also get the metro to Nádraží Holešovice and take 2 stops in the opposite direction with 1, 14 (Spořilov in this case) or 25, then go to the intersection and turn left. If you run into Polepšovna, you went the wrong way hah.