i.d.k. Barbecue is Smokin’ in Northern Utah
I.d.k. Barbecue is new to Ogden, but it’s been in Southern Utah since 2015. When I did a Standard-Examiner article earlier this summer, learned how Kevin and Emily Clark started out with a food truck outside of Bryce Canyon National Park.
If you don’t know about i.d.k., here are some facts:Kevin Clark worked for a software company, and every time he traveled to different states, he would try the barbecue. When he lost the software job, he decided to try doing a barbecue food truck.
The food truck, opened in 2015 in Cannonville, near Bryce Canyon, was the first step.
With no food industry experience, he learned how to barbecue mainly from watching YouTube videos, using pellet-based smokers. The pellets are a blend of maple, hickory and cherry woods.
“It’s a little sacrilege for some people, but we use pellets,” he said.
I.d.k is different from restaurants that adhere to a specific regional barbecue style of a region, such as Texas, Kansas City, or North Carolina. “We call ourselves Utah’s take on barbecue, but we don’t know what that really means,” said Clark. “We have Texas style, Georgia, and North Carolina. Also Hawaiian style, with a teriyaki sweet chicken.”
- They have three sauces. The base sauce is a typical red sauce; the spicy version has added jalapeno, and the smoky version has liquid smoke added. “My favorite is the spicy, but the smoky is everyone else’s favorite,” Clark said.
- In 2018, they moved from the food truck to a building in Tropic. From the many positive comments on restaurant-review websites such as Yelp!, I’m thinking this is the premier site.
“The first two years, the locals really made it work for us,” said Clark. “Without them, we wouldn’t be able to survive. Then these tour groups ended up telling people about us.”
In 2020, they opened a second location, at 235 South 7400 East in Huntsville, where Huntsville Barbecue was formerly located. “We only expand when we’re approached about it and have someone to run it,” Clark said. “We had an employee at the time who wanted to run it.”
Then in in April 2022, they opened in Ogden’s Five Points center at 179 N. Harrisville Road. “We were approached about it, and we have Tyler Snyder and my brother, Brian Clark, to run it.”
About the food: “Nothing we do here is from a box, as far as the meats and sides and meats,” Clark said. “We do just about everything we can from scratch.”
The top seller is brisket — moist beef slices edged with a pink-red smoke ring. There’s a $1.99 surcharge if you order it instead of chicken or pulled pork. I have tried both the pulled pork and brisket, and they both had a nice smoky flavor and the meat was really moist. (This contradicts some of the online reviews that complained about dry meat with little flavor. Maybe you came on a bad day? Because I thought it was on par with other local barbecue restaurants.)
Nachos are a signature item: tortilla chips piled with nacho cheese, house-made baked beans, and a choice of chicken, brisket or pork topped with sour cream and jalapenos.
It seems that i.d.k. has a thing about nacho cheese. Besides the nachos, this golden goo is used in a couple of their “not-so-secret” menu sandwiches. The top-selling House Sandwich features brisket, jalapenos and nacho cheese on a pepper-parmesan bun. The Emily, another favorite, has chicken, cole slaw and nacho cheese.
- The “not-so-secret” menu means that the regular menu board doesn’t list these items, but you can ask for them if you’re in-the-know. Clark said he’d like to see more people order the sandwiches.
“I wish people would go crazy with them, and try new things on them. They are easily the most versatile and customizable and fun because you can change them up.”
- I visited the Huntsville location two weeks ago. Some of the seats are made from old ski lift chairs; possibly a holdover from when the place was Huntsville Barbecue. The sauce station is made from an old truck grille, similar to one at the Ogden location.
Clark told me that in Huntsville, white chili is a big seller.
But it was a hot summer day, so I had a salad — a bed of spring mix greens and cole slaw, served with ranch dressing and a choice of sweet chicken, pork, or brisket. I chose the chicken, since the pulled pork wasn’t available (A barbecue joint out of pulled pork on a Friday at 11:30 a.m.? Let’s hope I was just a bit early, and a batch was just getting ready to come out of the smoker.)
The portion of chicken seemed pretty generous, in light of the fact that meat portions are getting smaller in restaurants due to rising food prices. In our interview, Clark had mentioned that nachos and baked potatoes get four ounces of meat. I’m assuming the same goes for the salad. The chicken had a sweet glaze, and I tasted more sweet than smoke.
- The favorite side dish in Ogden is potato salad, a recipe from Emily Clark’s family. While the Tropic store does double the business of the Ogden location, Ogden goes through as much potato salad as in Tropic.
The Ogden location has a country-style ambiance, with the picnic seating made from vintage pickup truck beds. Truck grilles serve as the drink and sauce stations. These were created by Clark’s friend, Shane Frost, a master welder.
The favorite side dish in Ogden is potato salad, a recipe from Emily Clark’s family. While the Tropic store does double the business of the Ogden location, Ogden goes through as much potato salad as in Tropic, said Kevin Clark.
Military, police and firefighters have discovered the Ogden store’s 10 percent discount and are already becoming regulars.
- The signature dessert — which I haven’t tried yet — is peach cobbler served in a waffle cone ($5.99; add $1.49 for a scoop of ice cream).
- About the name: When they were dating, Kevin would ask Emily where she wanted to eat dinner, and she would always answer, “I don’t know. Where do you want to go?”
Kevin would tease that he should open a restaurant called “I Don’t Know,” so she wouldn’t have that as an answer anymore.
“It was a joke, we never thought we would open a restaurant, but it turned out to be a premonition.”
At a glance:
Locations: 179 N. Harrisville Road, Ogden; 235 S. 7400 E., Huntsville; 161 N. Main Street, Tropic
Contact: idkbarbecue.com
Price range: $8.99-$23.99
Hours: Monday-Saturday, 11 a.m.-9 p.m. Closed Sunday.
Price range: $8.99-$23.99
Hours: Monday-Saturday, 11 a.m.-9 p.m. Closed Sunday.