Four years ago, when I first visited Smoke’N Ash BBQ for this magazine, I found an old-fashioned barbecue joint doing a formidable job of making old-fashioned barbecue. I’d go back a couple more times whenever I was in the south Arlington area and had a hankering for lean brisket soaked in sauce or huge baked potatoes topped with sausage with a snap.
But a lot can happen in four years, and for Smoke’N Ash owners Fasicka and Patrick Hicks, a lot has happened. In 2020, the couple began fusing two cuisines that had not, to their knowledge at least, been fused locally before: barbecue and Ethiopian. Their spot in a strip mall has since become one of the most popular barbecue joints in the North Texas area.
“We did it out of boredom, really,” Fasicka says with a laugh. “Patrick is the pitmaster, and he handles the barbecue. I was looking for something new to do, so I thought, `What if I do a few Ethiopian menu items?’ No one around here was doing Ethiopian food. It just grew from there.”
Crystal Wise
For inspiration, the couple looked no further than Fasicka’s own backyard — her homeland of Addis Abana, the largest city in Ethiopia. Fasicka grew up immersing herself in her family’s cooking — the methods, the recipes, the presentations — and she had kept her skills sharp by cooking for Patrick, who hails from Waco.
“One of the things most mothers pass onto their daughters in Ethiopia is teaching them how to cook,” she says. “My mom had five girls, and by the time we were 15, we knew how to handle a kitchen.”
Using spices, herbs, and other ingredients provided by one of her sisters still living in Ethiopia, Fasicka slowly introduced the food of her youth to people who visited Smoke’N Ash, initially with a separate menu under a separate restaurant name, Cherkose Ethiopian Cuisine, which Fasicka named after her late mother; it’s also the name of the neighborhood in Addis Ababa where Fasicka grew up.
Ethiopian food is somewhat of a rarity in Arlington and Fort Worth (Fort Worth’s lone Ethiopian spot, Samson’s, closed), so the Ethiopian community anxiously embraced Fasicka’s food. What was interesting, though, was that barbecue customers began ordering Ethiopian, and customers who ordered Ethiopian also ordered barbecue; some suggested the two combine the cuisines.
Crystal Wise
“We loved the idea but didn’t know how it was going to go over,” Fasicka says. “If there’s one thing we’ve learned about barbecue, it’s that people are very, very passionate about it. We didn’t know if it was something we could mess with.”
An article in Texas Monthly last year answered that question with a resounding “yes.” Barbecue writer Daniel Vaughn raved of the restaurant’s unique barbecue-infused Ethiopian dishes: tibs made with pork rib tips; doro wat spiked with smoked chicken; circular trays, called gebetas, filled with smoked meats co-mingling with Ethiopian sauces and sides, all meant to be scooped up and sopped up with injera, a traditional Ethiopian pancake-like flatbread.
Other “Tex-Ethiopian” menu items include bozena shiro, a dish comprised of slowly simmered chickpeas and cubes of smoked beef, and fifir, another smoked beef dish, this one served with boiled egg and injera in various spices.
Of course, you can get plain and simple barbecue standards, like brisket, ribs, and sausage, and, by the same token, traditional, barbecue-free Ethiopian dishes are available as well.
“Most people love the fusion dishes,” Fasicka says. “At this point, that’s the reason why a lot of people come here. But if you just want barbecue or Ethiopian food on its own, we can do that, too. We know no two diners are the same."
7301 Matlock Road, Arlington smokenashbbq.net
