Smokey Joe’s Island Grill is located across from the Playa Linda Beach Resort and it is the sister restaurant of Iguana Joe’s located in downtown Oranjestad. The restaurant features alfresco style dining and the wife and I decided to eat dinner here the second night on the island after taking a trip north from our hotel to look at what the shopping in the area had to offer. Frankly, the shopping in the area is not that good so thank goodness for Smokey Joe’s which was the only highlight of the excursion for me.

Smokey Joe’s is well known for both its barbecue and its hot sauces which can be bought for a price to take with you. And for anyone that knows me, they know I cannot pass up a good hot sauce. Smokey Joe’s offers two styles of hot sauces. The first is “Medium Hot” which is more mild and a mustard based habanero pepper sauce. The second is their “Xtra Hot” made with scotch bonnet peppers and which is definitely hotter and does tickle the taste buds but is no where near as hot, in my opinion, as the waitress and the staff tout it as.

While both are tasty, neither sauce really delivers a knock out punch that I would expect from a true hot sauce. But you do have to remember that I like my food spicy so what I call “hot” is usually a lot “hotter” than most people can handle. When I cook chili, for example, if it does not make you sweat when you are in the next room because you can smell the peppers, it is not nearly hot enough. In fact our waitress seemed very surprised when I placed a large quantity of their hot sauce on my plate and dipped every piece of food I ate gleefully in it remarking about its good flavor but not seeming to be phased by the heat it was supposed to contain. Perhaps for the average person these sauces are indeed “hot” but I was not impressed with that aspect of them. They did, I repeat, have good flavor though.

The problem with the menu at Smokey Joe’s is that everything on their menu sounds delicious which made it difficult to pick what to have for dinner. Luckily however this restaurant offers platters with a variety of different foods that allows you to sample a selection of what they have to offer. For myself, I picked the Ribs & Chicken & Shrimp combo with the Honey-Hoisin Chicken and the wife picked the Jamaican Jerk Chicken platter for her meal. My wife loved her chicken complimenting that it was spicy but not too hot. Consider that she hates my previously mentioned chili, for the someone that does not like really hot food this dish is a must.

When it came to my dinner, the Honey-Hoisin Chicken was superbly tender and juicy, the ribs were average and not really anything special but the shrimp were very well seasoned. And everything went very well with their own house hot sauces.

Rating this restaurant is not very hard. It is a classic Caribbean style restaurant with prompt service giving them a 4.5 and 4 stars (out of five stars) from myself and my wife respectively.

For ambience and décor we went a little lower. The restaurant is, like I said, pretty standard so nothing stands out. We both gave Smokey Joe’s 3 stars in this category.

Now we come to menu selection. You might think that chicken, ribs and shrimp are pretty standard fare and they are, but it is the way such dishes are prepared that matters more and Smokey Joe’s certainly has a good variety of ways that they serve their dishes. I rank this restaurant a 4 in this category while my wife only gives it 3 stars seeking a little more variety.

Portions are huge and ranking them was also not hard. We each gave them a 4 out of 5 stars for that.

And when it comes to quality of the food we have nothing but good things to say although my wife a little bit less than I do. I think Smokey Joe’s deserves a 4 out of 5 stars while my wife gave them slightly lower marks at only a 3.5

Our overall recommendation is give Smokey Joe’s a try next time you are in Aruba.