Several weekends ago, 
After getting the "good to go" on her jewelry, we headed down to Crumbl to pick up some cookies and then we decided to go browse one of the local auto dealerships to see if they had a new car that she liked. Unfortunately, we weren't able to find anything, it would seem dealerships are still pretty sparse on stock right now.
What we did end up finding was an interesting place to have lunch!
Summit Smokehouse and Tap Room is actually a little bit hard to find if you don't know the area around Mt. Pleasant that well. You would think something as cool as this would be right downtown. Real estate mus really be limited, because Summit is actually on a road heading out of town.
In fact, if you were to blink you would probably miss it. It looks more like an office building from the outside than it does a restaurant. To be fair, the area around it is still growing, but as of right now, it feels a bit off the beaten path.
Case in point, we were there in the middle of the day on a Friday, and there was only one other table that was occupied in the whole place. Pretty much the entire time we were there. I think by the time we left there were maybe four tables occupied.
Normally, that wouldn't be a very good sign, but I think in this case, it just had to do with the fact that they are in a weird location.
I apologize for the blurry picture above. That is the entrance to the resaturant.
We didn't realize until after the fact that Summit is somehow affiliated with one of our favorite places in Mt. Pleasant, Mountain Town Station. If I didn't know any better, I would almost say it is a satellite location where they can focus solely on BBQ and Beer instead of everything they have going on at the main Mt. Town location.
As expected, they had a fairly large beer selection. I went with the darker beer above, and
After looking at the menu, we decided on the "corn nuggets" for our appetizer. Think chicken nuggets or tater tots, but instead of chicken or potatoes in the middle, it was a mixture of sweet corn and cheese.
They were actually quite delicious. We were really impressed by the flavor and the crispiness of them. I do have to admit that we were a little disappointed when we discovered they weren't hand made.
Here we were thinking we were getting something unique to Summit that they had concocted themselves. After doing a quick online search, I found that you can pick up a bag of these at one of the local food retailers. Basically, they were just frying them up and serving them.
Don't get me wrong, they were still delicious, but it was still a little disappointing.
One thing I can say for Summit is that their portions are enormous. I know a lot of you who read this think the portions in the US are crazy, but I think you would be surprised just how big these ones are.
Chicken Wings and Pork Ribs are two of my most favorite things, so when I saw they had an entree that consisted of both, I knew I had to pick that. I'm also a really big fan of BBQ beans, so I decided to give those a try as my side dish.
As I said, I wasn't prepared for how big the portions were. We only ate about half of our appetizer and then our main dishes came out. I ate all the wings, but I think I only ate one or two of the ribs and ended up taking the rest home.
No lie, the beans basically came in a soup bowl. Usually when you come to places like this you get a little cup or ramekin with your side dishes in them. That wasn't the case here. I had more than enough beans to take home and have for several more meals.
They were fantastic though. I really loved the flavor.
That isn't to say that we don't like black pepper, but they almost added it a little too liberally to all of the dishes that we tried on this Friday afternoon. All except the corn nuggets I guess. My chicken wings and the ribs were equally rubbed in a copious amount of black pepper.
They had a decent selection of house made BBQ sauces at each table that you could sample from. I like places like that where they give the meat to you without anything on it and then let you choose how you want to dress it.
They had your standard honey BBQ, an Alabama white BBQ sauce (mayo based), a Carolina gold sauce (mustard based), a thinner North Carolina style sauce, and then a Cajun inspired tomato based sauce. I tried each of them of course and they were all quite good.
I think Summit is still pretty new, so perhaps they are still working out the kinks in their product. That being said, I am not sure it would be our first choice next time we come back to Mt. Pleasant.
Being a college town (home to Central Michigan University),
I'll make a note of that! :)
If you are in Mt. Pleasant and you have your heart set on BBQ, I wouldn't feel bad steering you towards Summit or Mountain Town Station, but if you are open to other cuisines, you might want to try someplace else. At least for the time being!
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All pictures/screenshots taken by myself or