Photography by Kathy Tran.

Kris Manning prays the City of Dallas will allow him to construct a new building on property adjacent to Smokey Joe’s BBQ on South R.L. Thornton Freeway one day.

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The 31-year-old owner of Smokey Joe’s ultimately wants to tear it down for parking and build a much larger restaurant next door, on land the restaurant already owns.

The barbecue joint opened in 1984, before Manning was born, but he took it over from his father in 2014 and has transformed the business and the building, which started out as a converted gas station where orders were placed through a walk-up window.

Manning has replaced the outdated and fire-prone smokers and added a new pit room, wood storage, walk-in refrigerator, a dining room and lobby.

“Even more important, central air and heat,” he says.

The old Smokey Joe’s had window units, and the pit was in the middle of the kitchen.

“So it was brutally hot,” Manning says. “That made it hard to hire, and sometimes customers would be like, ‘Whoo! That smoke is hitting my face.’”

That’s part of the reason Manning was reluctant to take over the business after graduating from Sam Houston State University with degrees in criminal justice and kinesiology. But he couldn’t find his corporate dream job and had been working at the restaurant to make ends meet for six months. 

The third time his father asked, he went for it.

One thing that hasn’t changed is the pork ribs: “Our ribs have always been amazing,” Manning says.

He credits longtime pit master Earl Harris for teaching him everything he knows about smoking meat.

But after trying Terry Black’s Barbecue in Austin, Manning was inspired to change the brisket recipe. The new Smokey Joe’s also serves chicken, house-made sausage and specials like brisket tacos with chile con queso.

Sides like mac and cheese, fried okra and collard greens are inspired by Manning’s own family reunions and recipes by cooks in his family.

“I was very blessed to be around a lot of people who can really cook,” he says.

The restaurant keeps it very Dallas with over-the-top loaded baked potatoes and a full menu of “sloppy fries,” which can also be ordered as nachos.

And then there are the desserts: buttermilk or sweet-potato pie made in house.

Manning started out “rolling bread,” wrapping up three slices of white bread per order at Smokey Joe’s, when he was 5 or 6 years old.

His father had given him and his brother a computer, and one Saturday when their aunt took them shopping, he gave them money to buy educational games, but they blew the cash on toys instead.

After that, they worked at the restaurant on Saturdays.

“It did teach me to work,” he says.

Besides smoking great barbecue and planning the future of his business, Manning focuses on giving back to the surrounding neighborhood.

At a back-to-school block party in July, Smokey Joe’s gave away 500 brisket sandwiches, hundreds of snow cones, free haircuts and school supplies.

“Without this community we wouldn’t be here,” he says. “I always tell my employees, ‘I don’t pay you; the customers do.’”

6403 South R.L. Thornton Freeway
Hours: 11 a.m.-9 p.m. Tuesday-Thursday, 11 a.m.-9:30 p.m. Friday-Saturday, 11 a.m.-5 p.m. Sunday