Blowin’ Smoke Southern Cantina

1611 Habersham Street, Savannah, GA

912-231-2385

When you’re looking for establishments where you can dine with canines, a restaurant that serves huge platters of meat sounds like a good place to start, right?

Blowin’ Smoke Southern Cantina is on the edge of Savannah’s historic district on a fairly quiet street, surrounded by mostly apartments and houses. The dining area feels like it is entirely outdoors, though the bar and part of the dining area are covered under a metal façade and open garage doors. There is a good bit of foot traffic past the patio, which makes for good people- (and dog-) watching.

I called ahead to make sure that dogs were welcome on the patio, and the people on the phone were very nice. That pleasant attitude continued once the dogs , my human companion, and I arrived at the restaurant. The patio at Blowin’ Smoke is not particularly shady, but there are some trees near the corners and movable cement-based patio umbrellas, good for securing the dogs’ leashes (fact: sturdy leash security is vital to human restaurant enjoyment). Our waitress quickly brought Hefner and Charlie a bowl of ice water (and a couple of glasses for the humans as well).

The menu at Blowin’ Smoke offers a wide variety of drinks and meat-centric food options, including tacos, soups, salads, dips, barbecue platters, and an assortment of side dishes. The drink menu includes both bottled/canned domestic and craft beers, along with a couple of draft selections, and a decent selection of signature mixed drinks and wine, sangria, and margaritas. On my visit, I tried a few of the signature cocktails (I included their menu descriptions).

• Hibiscus Mule: Tito’s vodka, hibiscus spirits, freshly squeezed lime juice, topped with ginger beer ($8). It was served in the typical copper mug, and it was very refreshing. This was definitely my favorite of the drinks I tried.
• 1611 Bloody Mary: Referent Horseradish infused vodka, celery bitters, Blowin’ Smoke’s signature BBQ sauce, and garlic-infused Worcestershire sauce ($8). You can also add a pork belly skewer for an extra dollar, but after the huge amount of meat I consumed, I didn’t want any more pig in my face. They did a good job of not making my Bloody Mary too spicy, though there was a lot of pepper and sediment in the bottom of the glass that wasn’t pleasant to drink.
• Don Draper Old Fashioned: Bulleit bourbon, blood orange liquor, cherry bark bitters, freshly muddled orange, and maraschino cherries ($8). The menu also mentions that it doesn’t come with a cigarette, but since it tasted kind of like melted bubblegum, I wasn’t really feeling the Mad Men vibe anyway.

Blowin’ Smoke has several appetizers to choose from, including something called the “$5 Holla,” a dish that apparently changes day-to-day. On this visit, it was a plate of fries covered in barbecue brisket and blue cheese crumbles. While I’m always a fan of strong cheese, the dish really needed some sort of sauce to make the toppings stick to the potatoes.

Since Blowin’ Smoke is a barbecue restaurant, we decided to go all-in and order the Holy Smoke Platter ($28, with a $5 up-charge for splitting, which we did). The platter includes a single (huge) beef rib, 4 ounces of pulled pork, 4 ounces of chopped brisket, and 2 sides (we chose the southwest mac and cheese and the Parmesan-crusted pickle spears).

Even though there were two humans eating, with dogs tagging in pretty regularly, we were only able to finish about half of it. The meat was cooked perfectly, charred on the outside and falling apart easily when I poked it with a fork. In fact, I wanted to hold up the gigantic rib bone, beef intact, to take a picture, but the meat dropped right off (which is a good thing, for those of you who don’t know).

As expected, Hefner and Charlie were fans of this place. They were able to eat most everything we ordered, and they had a shady place to lie down. There were several other dogs on the patio enjoying table scraps and the occasional rib bone. I gave the bone to Hefner and Charlie to see what they would do with it, but as my understanding is that cooked bones are bad for dogs, I retrieved it from them before they were able to splinter it.

At the end of the afternoon, the dogs and I left Blowin’ Smoke with smiles on our muzzles (and some leftover meat in our teeth).