Smoke rises from the back lot of one restaurant on the York Road Corridor. For some, this might be an inconvenience or something to be worried about. But at Heritage Smokehouse, that smoke comes from the restaurant’s on-site smokers, where they prepare their meat before butchering it.
George Marsh, Heritage Smokehouse’s founder, owner and chef, first got into the restaurant business with a part-time job at 16. He loved to skateboard, but it was an expensive hobby. He started working in restaurants so he could buy new boards and wheels.
While he was not initially planning to start his own restaurant, he worked at other restaurants throughout college and eventually dropped out so he could start attending culinary school.
“So I moved back up to Baltimore, and from there, I became more and more passionate about food and started to think about different directions I could take that interest in,” he recalls. “I was always really interested in growing food and working with farms, which is how I teamed up with Spike [Gjerde] over at Woodberry Kitchen.”
Within six months of working at Woodberry Kitchen, Marsh was promoted to the restaurant’s chef de cuisine. Due to its farm-to-table approach, he became interested in butchery — preparing meat on-site and making sausages. This interest would ultimately lead him to open Heritage Smokehouse, with house-smoked meats as its primary focus.
The restaurant’s smokers are housed in a screened-in smokehouse in its back lot. Initially, finding a restaurant site that would allow for a smokehouse was difficult. Some properties are not properly zoned to allow for one, and others present issues like residents of nearby houses complaining about the smoke. The York Road Corridor turned out to be the perfect spot — not only does it allow the restaurant’s chefs to smoke meats to their hearts’ content, it’s also only a few minutes away from where Marsh lives.
“The responsibility of being sole proprietor, restaurateur and owner is a lot. Cutting out travel time definitely makes things more efficient, and it’s great to be in our own neighborhood,” he says. “We also felt the area could use a great place for families to go. We wanted to open a place where anyone could come to have a good time and enjoy good food and drinks.”
The smokehouse’s location also affects the taste of its smoked meat dishes. Texas may come to mind as the best place in the U.S. for barbecue, but Maryland has a wetter, colder climate that affects how wood burns. It’s something that Marsh and the rest of the kitchen staff have to consider when making food.
A lot of thought also went into Heritage Smokehouse’s interior beyond where the smokehouse should be placed. Its decor was inspired by basement club rooms, with knotty pine paneling, wall-mounted hunting trophies and other eclectic decorations. Pictures of musicians and artists line the walls, and one side of the restaurant features a peculiar collection of celebrity-themed prayer candles.
That homely atmosphere extends to the work environment, says bar manager Blair Plombom.
“I like the small atmosphere. All the staff feel like family. We hang out all the time, and I see them almost every day,” Plombom says. “I feel like it’s fun for customers as well.”
Heritage Smokehouse’s barbecue dishes, like its beef brisket, are especially popular. Marsh says that he wouldn’t consider Heritage Smokehouse to solely be a barbecue restaurant, though.
“Barbecue is a big part of what we do, and it drives a lot of the sales,” he notes. “But I really also enjoy all of the plates that we put on the menu that allow us to kind of break free of the barbecue chains and experiment with how smoke interacts with other meats or vegetables.”
For daring diners, the smokehouse offers the whopping $85 “The Ron Swanson” special, inspired by the meat-loving “Parks and Recreation” character — a sampler of all its smoked meat dishes, including beer can chicken, pork roast, spare ribs and house-made sausages like käsekrainer and kielbasa.
Marsh doesn’t have a particular favorite dish, but enjoys anything that lets him butcher and use every part of an animal. Heritage Smokehouse’s menu is inspired by whatever he finds interesting or is inspired by, and many of its dishes change regularly as he gets ideas from things he sees online or on TV.
“Sometimes we have leftovers that I turn into something else. Other times, I see a product I want to work with and make dishes based on that product. Maybe it’s rapini or Chinese broccoli, or it’s just potatoes,” he says. “And sometimes one of the guys in the back has an idea. We do R&D all the time, trying new things and seeing what works.”
While Marsh does most of the butchering, his wife, Jen, is responsible for the restaurant’s dessert menu. She makes all of their sweeter offerings, from the old-fashioned banana pudding to the “Finn’s Favorite” chocolate cake, from scratch. Marsh describes her as an indispensable part of the business as both its pastry chef and the one who helps him run back-end operations.
Heritage Smokehouse opened during the height of the COVID-19 pandemic, which was a difficult time for many new businesses, but it’s been going steady for the past two-and-a-half years and has attracted an audience of regular customers and occasional diners.
Looking toward the restaurant’s future, Marsh says that he would like to have Heritage Smokehouse cater more events. At the end of the day, though, nothing makes him happier than seeing the restaurant full of happy customers.
“It’s a pain in the ass sometimes, but packing this place full of people who are having fun at the bar and the tables is why we are doing this,” he says.
