This year my husband and I hosted the family Thanksgiving dinner, which involved a whole lot of preparation. In addition to getting the house spiffed up, there were three pies to be made and my husband’s grandmother’s dressing recipe that, while delicious, is a two-day ordeal to make. For that reason, we knew our Wednesday night dinner had better be easy to put together or, better yet, made in someone else’s kitchen.

Last summer, after a hot, smoky day spent doing yard work, we ordered takeout from a local food truck, and now we turned to Sid’s Gourmet Smoke-N-Grill to again deliver us from time in the kitchen. We had raved about the food to our daughter and her husband, and this gave us the opportunity to share the experience with them, as they had arrived a few days ahead of the feast to stay with us.

As I wrote in a previous blog, Sid’s has only been around a little over a year and operates out of a small Airstream trailer in downtown Medford, from which chef-owner Sid delivers big flavor with great service and reasonable prices. His menu features house-smoked meats (beef brisket, pork, pork belly, chicken, meatballs) and traditional barbecue sides (coleslaw, slow-cooked beans, mac and cheese, potato salad) with Sid’s own unique spin on them. A well-designed website and online ordering made it easy for us to peruse the menu and place our order well in advance, allowing us to designate the exact time we’d pick up our order.

Harry and son-in-law Josh brought home the goods, and we each quickly claimed our entrées and divvied up the sides we’d agreed to share between us. Daughter Jenny and I each had ordered the creamy mac and cheese, hers with the smoked pork belly and mine with smoked pork. I was a bit disappointed when I found mine was also pork belly; in the past I’ve found pork belly just a bit too rich, and I thought it would be especially so with an already unctuous side dish. To my delight, the smoking of the meat tamped down the fattiness, and the mac and cheese itself, with a complex blend of cheeses, was fabulous.

Harry enjoyed the beef brisket in a sandwich, while Josh ordered the brisket with Japanese fried rice.  As we had before, he found the brisket tender and moist, and the rice truly unique and flavorful. Jenny had also ordered a meatball hoagie, with marinara sauce and cheese, and it also proved a winner. Sid incorporates West African spices (he was born in Côte d’Ivoire) to create magical flavors in several of his dishes, including the beans, which Josh proclaimed some of the best he’d ever had. The beef and potato chowder also received a “best-ever” label from Harry, a man who knows his soup, as it was packed with big chunks of potato, bits of carrot and generous pieces of that tasty beef brisket and flavored with those herbs and spices.

We shared a couple of pouches of Sid’s own fruit drinks, the strong but refreshing OMGinger, a West African drink incorporating ginger, pineapple and lime,   and the hibiscus Jamaican tea, its sweetness and fruity flavors offset with subtle use of star anise and other spices — really delightful.

Even not-quite-two-year-old granddaughter June enjoyed her share of the meal, and we were still left with a lot of leftovers which we somehow had to squeeze into an already full refrigerator. It was worth the effort, though, in order to enjoy a different sort of leftovers than the Thanksgiving kind in the following days. We all agreed Sid’s should become a permanent aspect of our Thanksgiving preparations in the future. There are still a few unexplored items on the menu (smoked chicken cheesesteak, anyone?) and new favorites we want to revisit.

— Patty Vanikiotis, associate editor/copy editor