Now smoked brisket wants a turn.

Ribs, pulled pork, smoked chicken and big sharing platters have become much easier to find around Peterborough.

 The arrival of Hickory's Smokehouse in Hampton this summer made that particularly difficult to miss.

But American-style barbecue isn't simply burgers with more sauce.

Done properly, the whole point is time.

And lots of it.

Sixteen hours is a long wait for lunch

Hickory's opened its Peterborough restaurant in Hampton in June, taking over the former Harvester at Kempley Close.

One of the headline attractions is brisket smoked for 16 hours, alongside ribs, pulled pork, chicken, burgers and substantial sharing platters.

That's part of the appeal of smokehouse food.

It isn't particularly delicate.

Nobody is arranging three peas with tweezers.

You're supposed to get stuck in.

Hickory's has gone all-in on the American theme too, building the restaurant, bar and wider experience around Southern-style barbecue rather than simply adding a rack of ribs to an otherwise ordinary pub menu.

In other words, this isn't Peterborough cautiously experimenting with brisket.

Someone has built a whole night out around it.

Whittlesey was already firing up the smoker

The big chain wasn't first.

A few miles away in Whittlesey, BBQs and Brews at The Letter B has taken a much more independent route.

The family-run business has its own smokehouse, with meat reportedly spending between 12 and 24 hours being smoked.

Brisket, ham hock and its pit burger have all featured among the recommendations.

That gives us two very different versions of the same idea.

One is a sizeable American-themed restaurant in Hampton.

The other grew out of a Whittlesey pub.

Both depend on diners believing that giving meat a lot more time can make it considerably more interesting.

Fortunately, we only have to turn up at the end.

Smokehouse food creates its own problem

Tell somebody a piece of beef has spent 16 hours smoking and you've raised expectations.

The brisket needs to be tender.

The ribs need to justify the sticky fingers.

Pulled pork should actually pull apart.

And if a restaurant makes a big thing of smoking its meat for hours, people are going to notice if what eventually arrives tastes like ordinary grilled meat with barbecue sauce.

That's the danger of building the story around the cooking method.

The customer expects to taste the difference.

Early reaction to Hickory's Peterborough has been mixed rather than universally glowing.

Some diners have praised the meat, atmosphere, portions and service; others have questioned value, portions or whether particular dishes lived up to expectations.

Which brings us to the difficult bit.

How much is the waiting worth?

A burger is fairly easy to understand.

You can look at the menu, see what's inside it and decide whether the price feels reasonable.

Smoked brisket asks you to pay for something you never actually saw happening.

The trimming.

The seasoning.

The smoking.

The temperature control.

And all those hours when the restaurant was doing something to your dinner while you were somewhere else entirely.

That's part of why properly smoked barbecue can command serious restaurant prices.

But it also means the result has nowhere to hide.

If you're paying for meat that's been carefully smoked for half a day, you need to understand why after the first mouthful.

Peterborough has tried the smokehouse idea before

There's another reason not to declare 2026 the beginning of an unstoppable barbecue revolution.

The Shed Smoke House opened on Cowgate in 2025 but subsequently closed.

And don't confuse it with the current Shed Tap Room & Deli at Fletton Quays, which is a different business offering Italian deli-style food, pizzas, Sunday roasts, drinks and live music.

So Peterborough already has evidence that putting smokehouse food on the menu doesn't guarantee people will keep coming back.

Perhaps that's where things become more interesting.

Opening a new restaurant can generate curiosity.

Keeping it busy once everyone has tried the brisket once is a different test.

Is BBQ really the new burger?

Possibly.

But hopefully it doesn't become another competition to see who can put the largest quantity of food on a tray.

The interesting thing about barbecue isn't the photograph of six meats, three sauces and enough chips to require structural support.

It's what smoke, seasoning and time can do to the food.

That's the reason to seek it out.

And around Peterborough there are now two quite different ways to try it: the big American smokehouse experience in Hampton and the independent pub-and-smoker approach in Whittlesey.

Maybe BBQ isn't replacing the burger at all.

Maybe we're simply becoming more interested in what happened to the meat before somebody put it in a bun.

Who's actually doing Peterborough's best BBQ?

Forget who's got the biggest sharing platter.

We want to know where you've eaten the best smoked meat around Peterborough.

Brisket, ribs, pulled pork or chicken. Restaurant, pub, takeaway or somewhere with a smoker we haven't discovered yet.

Give us the place and tell us what we should order.

If enough people point us in the same direction, there's a Taste Trail test waiting to happen.

Don't forget to comment below