A fork disappears into a mound of creamy mac and cheese, comes back carrying a dark-edged chunk of burnt end, and suddenly the idea of ordering a “light lunch” is completely gone.
That is the kind of trouble waiting at Embark Smoked Meats, a compact barbecue spot at 811 Main Street in downtown Boonton.
Owner and chef Jasmine Gomez has built the menu around meats that spend serious time in the smoker, then surrounded them with unapologetic comfort food: loaded fries, pork-studded beans, sweet cinnamon cornbread, and mac bowls large enough to end all discussion about sharing.
The restaurant opened its Boonton storefront after Gomez moved from backyard experimentation to a food truck and eventually a permanent pit.
Today, brisket, burnt ends, ribs, pulled pork, and smoked wings form the core of a menu that understands one important New Jersey truth: sometimes the best meal is the one requiring extra napkins and absolutely no restraint.
Chef Jasmine Gomez Built a Woman-Owned Barbecue Destination in Downtown Boonton
The road to 811 Main Street started in a parking lot. Before Embark Smoked Meats had a bright storefront in downtown Boonton, Jasmine Gomez was working through the less glamorous stages of building a barbecue business: experimenting with a smoker, developing recipes, purchasing a food truck, and finding somewhere she could legally handle the long smoking process.
At one point, she became a member of a local Elks lodge so she could use its kitchen and parking lot while searching for equipment suitable for an indoor restaurant. It is a wonderfully New Jersey origin story—part culinary ambition, part logistical puzzle, and part willingness to do whatever the job required.
Gomez is a culinary school graduate, but barbecue demanded a different sort of education. A brisket does not care about credentials when the fire is inconsistent, and pork will not become tender simply because the cook has good intentions.
The craft depends on repetition, timing, temperature, seasoning, and the patience to leave the smoker alone. Embark eventually grew from those early experiments into a food truck and then a permanent restaurant, which opened in Boonton in December 2023.
The business now identifies itself proudly as woman-owned, with Gomez remaining closely involved in daily operations rather than retreating into a behind-the-scenes ownership role.
Customers may find her checking orders, talking through the menu, or making sure a first-time visitor understands the difference between brisket, burnt ends, and the various loaded combinations.
That presence gives Embark a personality that would be difficult to manufacture through branding alone. The restaurant feels connected to the person who built it, including the persistence required to turn a smoker in an Elks parking lot into one of downtown Boonton’s most talked-about comfort-food stops.
Twelve-Hour Brisket and Slow-Smoked Burnt Ends Put the Pit Front and Center
Barbecue exposes impatience faster than almost any other kind of cooking. Embark’s brisket spends about 12 hours in the smoker, while the pulled pork can go for 14 hours or longer, leaving no room for shortcuts once the process begins.
The brisket is seasoned with a house beef rub and sold by the portion or tucked between sweet buns in a sandwich with coleslaw and a choice of sauce. At the time of writing, both the brisket and burnt ends are listed at $15.95, making it tempting to order one of each and call the decision-making process complete.
The two cuts deliver different kinds of satisfaction. Brisket brings long slices with a peppery exterior, rendered fat, and meat tender enough to pull apart without collapsing into mush.
Burnt ends concentrate the whole operation into compact bites with dark, smoky edges and richer pockets of beef. They are the pieces people tend to “sample” directly from someone else’s tray until a suspicious amount has disappeared.
Sauce is available, but the smoke and seasoning are designed to carry the meat before anything is poured over it. That matters at a place where the proteins are supposed to be the point rather than a delivery system for something sweet from a squeeze bottle.
Diners who cannot settle on one cut can choose a two-meat plate for $24.95 or a three-meat plate for $32.95, both useful solutions when brisket and burnt ends are competing with ribs, chicken, pork, and sausage. The combination plates also come with cinnamon cornbread, adding a little sweetness between bites.
This is not fussy barbecue arranged with tweezers. It arrives ready to be pulled apart, passed around, dipped into sauce, and judged by the amount of silence that follows the first bite.
Burnt Ends Mac and Cheese Turns a Classic Side Into the Main Event
A side dish officially stops being a side when it costs $24.95, arrives carrying a generous portion of smoked beef, and can comfortably serve as an entire meal. Embark’s burnt ends mac and cheese takes the familiar barbecue combination of meat and noodles and removes the polite separation between them.
Instead of placing a small scoop beside the protein, the kitchen starts with a hefty serving of its gourmet mac and cheese, covers it with burnt ends, and lets diners finish the job with their preferred barbecue sauce.
The result lands somewhere between a barbecue platter and the most excessive casserole at a family gathering.
The cheese coats the pasta without turning it into soup, while the beef adds smoke, salt, charred edges, and enough substance to make every forkful different. Some bites lean creamy; others are almost entirely meat.
The best ones catch a little of everything, especially after sauce works its way into the noodles. Burnt ends are particularly well suited to the dish because their concentrated flavor does not disappear beneath the cheese.
They push back. Embark applies the same format to other proteins, offering brisket mac for $24.95, pulled pork mac for $22.95, chicken mac for $19.95, chili mac for $22.95, and sausage mac for $19.95.
That creates a complete subcategory of the menu for anyone who believes ordinary mac and cheese is simply unfinished barbecue. The plain version remains available as a $6.19 side, which is the sensible move when ordering a large platter.
Sensible, however, is not why people become fixated on the burnt ends version. It is rich, smoky, messy around the edges, and built with the confidence of a kitchen that knows nobody came to a barbecue restaurant hoping to leave impressed by moderation.
Pulled Pork, Ribs, and Smoked Wings Make Choosing Just One Meat Nearly Impossible
The smartest order at Embark may be the one that admits defeat immediately. Instead of pretending you will be satisfied with a single protein, bring another hungry person and split a three-meat plate.
Pulled pork is the natural place to begin. It is smoked for roughly 14 to 16 hours with a house pork rub, producing strands that remain juicy enough to eat without being buried in sauce.
The pork is available on its own for $13.95, piled onto a sandwich, spooned over fries, folded into mac and cheese, or stacked onto a burger with American cheese, coleslaw, pickles, and barbecue sauce. Then there are the ribs, sold as a half rack of six St. Louis-style spare ribs for $17.95.
They are slow-smoked with the same pork rub, but the experience is completely different: a little more chew, plenty of browned exterior, and the unavoidable realization that barbecue ribs are not first-date food unless both people know what they signed up for. The wings deserve space on the tray too.
Five wings cost $11.95 and go through several steps before reaching the table. They are pickle-brined, coated in the house poultry seasoning, smoked, and then flash-fried, a process that gives them the flavor of the pit without sacrificing crisp skin.
The half chicken receives similar treatment, pairing brining and smoking with a final fry for texture. Sausage, chicken bites, brisket meatballs, and the H.O.P. sandwich—brisket and pulled pork topped with original barbecue sauce—stretch the options even further.
This is how a quick order turns into a full table of trays. Every time the decision appears settled, another smoked item makes a convincing argument for inclusion.
Loaded Fries, House Sauces, and Cinnamon Cornbread Complete the Feast
The tray may look complete once the meat arrives, but the supporting cast at Embark is unusually good at stealing attention. Start with the burnt end fries, priced at $18.95.
Crinkle-cut fries provide the base, but the smoked beef turns them from a snack into something closer to a fork-required meal. The pulled pork fries cost $16.95, while chili-cheese fries, chili fries, cheese fries, and truffle fries create several possible routes toward the same conclusion: plain potatoes never stood a chance.
The baked beans are another serious side, made with smoked pork rather than left as a sugary afterthought. Sweet potato fries, coleslaw, beef chili, kale salad, and the standard mac and cheese give larger groups enough variety to build a proper spread.
Then there is the cinnamon cornbread. A piece costs $2, and its gentle sweetness works almost like a reset button after the salt, smoke, spice, and richness of the meat.
Calling it dessert would be inaccurate, but saving the last bite until the end is a very reasonable strategy. Embark’s sauces provide another layer of choices.
The current lineup includes Original BBQ, Carolina BBQ, Alabama White, Buffalo, chipotle barbecue, horseradish mayo, and cheese sauce. Each one serves a different purpose.
Original barbecue is the natural match for brisket or pork, Carolina sauce brings sharper contrast, and Alabama White gives chicken a tangy, creamy finish. Horseradish mayo works particularly well when beef and sweet buns are involved.
The restaurant also sells 12-ounce bottles of its original sauce for $10.95, which is useful information for anyone who has ever tried to carry home several tiny sauce cups without creating a disaster in the passenger seat. None of these extras feel like filler.
They turn a smoked-meat order into the kind of crowded, pass-it-around feast where everyone quietly keeps track of who took the final piece of cornbread.
Friendly Counter Service and Main Street Charm Keep Regulars Coming Back
Downtown Boonton has the right setting for a place like Embark. The restaurant sits at 811 Main Street, surrounded by the small businesses, storefronts, and steady foot traffic that give this Morris County downtown its lived-in character.
Inside, the setup is casual and straightforward. Orders are placed at the counter, the dining room is clean and modern rather than covered in manufactured roadhouse décor, and the compact space lets the smell of smoked meat do most of the decorating.
Gomez’s hands-on presence reinforces that neighborhood feeling. This is the kind of restaurant where questions about the menu are welcomed, not treated like evidence that a customer has failed a barbecue exam.
Staff members can guide a newcomer toward a combination plate, explain the sauces, or help calculate whether ordering mac and cheese, cornbread, beans, and loaded fries is ambitious or simply correct.
Customer feedback repeatedly mentions the friendly service alongside the brisket, burnt ends, wings, ribs, and sides, suggesting that hospitality has become as recognizable as the food.
Current hours are Wednesday through Saturday from 11 a.m. to 8 p.m. and Sunday from 11 a.m. to 4 p.m.; the restaurant is closed Monday and Tuesday. Those limited early-week hours make the middle of the week feel like the unofficial reopening of barbecue season in Boonton.
Takeout and delivery are available, and catering extends the menu to parties where one small tray of anything would be a serious planning error. Yet eating inside adds something useful to the experience.
You see platters landing on nearby tables, hear regulars placing orders without studying the menu, and inevitably notice at least one person staring at a burnt ends mac bowl as though reconsidering every previous mac and cheese decision.
That combination of serious smoking, generous comfort food, and familiar counter service has allowed Embark to become more than another Main Street restaurant.
It feels like a business that earned its regulars one long-cooked tray at a time.