DOC’s Commerce Smokehouse Is a BBQ Blast

DOC’s Commerce Smokehouse. Photo by Cari Taylor-Carlson.

If you are looking for some tasty barbecue, check out DOC’s Commerce Smokehouse on Vel R. Phillips Avenue in downtown Milwaukee, across the street from the Baird Center and four blocks from Fiserv Forum. The location suggests it could get busy on nights when there are events at the Forum — and it does, as our server told us — but if you come for lunch on a weekday, as friends and I did twice recently, parking was easy and DOC’s wasn’t overly busy.

If you are looking for a starter, a good choice is the hat trick, a trio of pimento cheese, L.A. caviar and smoked onion dip. My companion, who hails from Texas, spoke highly of the heavily pimento-studded cheese, a Southern specialty, while the rest of us decided the L.A. caviar, made with black-eyed peas in a balsamic marinade, must be an acquired Southern taste. The smoked onion dip, flavored with smoked paprika, was a perfect match for the house-made chips. The trio also included saltines, perhaps intended to pair with the caviar.

The dry-rubbed St. Louis ribs had a lot of flavors from the rub. A dash of DOC’s spicy TX heat sauce added pops of acidity to the ribs, which were meant to be hand-held and gnawed to get all the meat off the bones.

You can order your Angus brisket on a plate or in a sandwich, and fatty or not. The brisket, like the ribs, needed sauce. DOC’s original sweet sauce paired well with my fatty brisket, which was also smoked with a dry rub. There was enough fat to add buttery flavor, but not so much that it overpowered the meat.

You also have a list of sandwiches to choose from: smoked pastrami with Swiss and kraut on griddled rye; DOC’s club; grilled cheese with chopped brisket and caramelized onions; a burger; and the one my companion chose, the Texas dip — shaved prime rib, onions, peppers, mozzarella and herb aioli on ciabatta. This was more than a mouthful of thinly sliced, well-done roast beef smothered with onions and peppers. It came with a dipping sauce if you wanted more, but the peppers, onions and rich aioli gave the sandwich enough layers of flavor.

On a second visit, I ordered pork shoulder, a plate instead of the sandwich. If you do this, you will find, as I did, there was more meat on the plate than in the sandwich. The pork was pulled, a luxurious pile of meat that partnered nicely with DOC’s Memphis tangy sauce. An added bonus was the inclusion of crusty edge pieces from the shoulder that retained the flavors from the rub and the hickory smoke.

The daily special was brisket chili. It was loaded with brisket, not too spicy, and would have been better if it had been served hot, not tepid. It came with another special: deep-fried, cornmeal-crusted okra. These tasty bites were almost too easy to eat, like potato chips, and needed no barbecue sauce or aioli to improve their flavors.

Because the sandwiches and the barbecue plates came with sides, you might want to try the Bacardi baked beans with their subtle rum flavor or the mac and cheese shells drowned in a mild cheesy sauce. Both were delicious. Or you may want to order our favorite, dirty fries tossed with the brisket rub and served with tomato aioli. The smoky, tangy aioli made a delicious dip for the fries, which were lightly dusted with the rub — the same rub we met earlier in the brisket sandwich and the St. Louis ribs.

If you are especially hungry, you could order the meat coma, which allegedly serves up to six. For $100, you get 1/4 pound of pork, 1/4 pound of brisket, four Usinger’s hot links, six ribs and two pints of sides.

Because my companions and I were feasting on the barbecue meat, we overlooked dessert, which, according to our server, is all made in house. There are four kinds of pie on the menu: lemon icebox, Oreo, peanut butter and chocolate.

Milwaukee has many restaurants and carryout places where you can try out a variety of barbecue styles. If Southern, hickory-smoked, dry-rubbed is your favorite, then check out Doc’s. I can attest to the ribs, the pork and the brisket, and DOC’s special sauces. It was all good.

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• Location: 754 N. Vel R. Phillips Ave.
• Phone: 414-935-2029
• Hours: 11:30 a.m. to 9 p.m. Mon-Wed, 11:30 a.m. to 10 p.m. Thu, 11:30 a.m. to 12:30 a.m. Fri-Sat
• Neighborhood: Westown
• Website: https://docsbbq.net/pages/milwaukee-bbq-menu
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/DOCsCommerceBBQ

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