We visited the new Hickory's Smokehouse in Cannock and enjoyed a night of rich flavours, fantastic food and a great atmosphere

Hickory’s Smokehouse have been busy getting the new Cannock restaurant ready to welcome guests, having taken over the former Chase Gate pub on Wolverhampton Road in Wedges Mill in September.

The new restaurant is the second one to open in Staffordshire, following on from the Stafford restaurant on Kingsway, so ahead of the proper opening on February 27, Hickory’s held one of its famed practice nights to get everything ready.

I’ve been to two of these nights at Stafford and Shrewsbury, so I know they are all about getting serving staff used to interacting with customers, for kitchen staff to get the necessary repetitions in and for the chain to see how people take to the new restaurant.

I was lucky enough to receive the invitation to come to the Cannock practice night on February 24 and brought my mum Diane along to take in the night and, for her, revisit a pub she’d been to a couple of times (we have family in Rugeley, which isn’t too far away).

I had never been in the pub, but I’d driven past it numerous times over the years and always found it eye-catching, if not somewhere I’d want to visit, but as we drove up for the practice night, it really caught the eye in a better way, being brightly lit and with the familiar Hickory’s logos and signs outside, along with the light sounds of Country music.

It also looked bigger than the Chase Gate, with a new extension having been built on the right-hand side of the building, and as we walked in, it smelled new.

With a warm welcome from the people on the front desk, we were taken to our table, walking past all the familiar Hickory’s paraphernalia, from signs showing American symbols to a large pig standing on a wooden divider, and past tables full of people enjoying their food and drink.

We were sat in the next extension, which gave us more of a feeling of space as the roof was very high and the room felt spacious, so you didn’t feel crammed in or at risk of a cocktail being dropped on your back or a piece of brisket down your front.

Speaking of brisket, as part of the visit, we had the chance to go and see the smoker for the meats. For anyone who wonders how they smoke the brisket for 16 hours, it was a wonderful opportunity to see the smoker up close, which was shipped in from the USA and then the kitchen was built around it.

The tour and chat with the chefs who work with it was well worth smelling like smoke and meat for the rest of the night (which, by the way, I was completely fine with) as it was fascinating to see the work that goes into making the brisket as moreish as it is.

On that note, with mum ordering a beer and myself a root beer (driving, but also love root beer), we set about ordering our eats for the night, starting with the appetisers.

In order to try a few different things, mum ordered the giant garlic buttered pretzel bites, which I ordered the southern fried chicken in a basket and also asked for the brisket popcorn bites.

The pretzels came with a beer-infused cheese sauce for dipping and are soft to chew, full of rich flavour and go well with the sauce, which the chicken is soft, well-seasoned with melt-in-the-mouth batter and complemented by a tangy honey mustard sauce.

As for the popcorn brisket….oh, my goodness me!. The meat is soft and full of flavour and texture and you could sit and eat them all night, with the BBQ sauce alongside adding a pleasant zing to it.

The nice thing about Hickory’s is the sheer amount of choice when looking at main courses, from the lighter bites of hot dogs and chicken subs to the classics menu with brisket, beef rub and ribs, to the smokehouse platter with everything on it, then there are steaks of all sizes, big burgers and a tremendous mains menu with Gumbo, fish, Mac and Cheese and fajitas to pick from.

If you’re not entirely sure, there’s also barbecue trays with a range of different meats on them, alongside fries, pickles and house slaw, so I decided to go for the Carnivore, which has brisket and gravy, jalapeno and cheese sausage, smoked chicken pieces and a hot-honey glazed smoked pork belly.

My mum is not someone who likes spice, but the beauty of the menu was there was something for her as well as she ordered the roast sea bass fillets, which were served with sweet and sour glazed peppers, black beans and charred lime.

Along with a magnificent southern fried onion blossom with ranch dip (take an onion, deep fry it and spread it out and you’re in flavour country) and mac and cheese with brisket (you might be sensing a theme here), we dug into our respective meals.

For mum, the sea bass was nicely presented, well cooked and the bits around it just added to the meal and she cleared her plate and the side of fries she ordered.

My meal was big, rich and full of fantastic flavours, complemented by the hot sauces supplied by the restaurant. The brisket, as I’ve said, was soft and tender, the sausage tangy and zinging with flavour, the chicken soft and succulent and the pork belly just a range of all the right flavours, not overly chewy and with a nice aftertaste.

The sides were excellent too and, if we’d stopped there, I’d have been entirely satisfied, but then the opportunity came to try a dessert, so we took a look at the gooey and sweet treats on offer.

You can have pancakes, churros or cookies, plus the fun options of marshmallows over a mini-fire and biscuits to make smores, but mum settled on the chocolate fudge cake, while I picked the American Screwball Fro-co (frozen custard, which is like very rich vanilla ice cream).

If you could pick songs to go with our desserts, the fudge cake would be “Black Night” by Deep Purple, while mine might as well have been “Barbie Girl” by Aqua, such was the sight that appeared before us.

Mine was blue and red, covered in marshmallows and an American flag and left me giggling while saying aloud “I’m 44!”, but it was a lovely sweet treat, cool and refreshing and with enough E numbers to help me on the drive home.

The Fudge cake looked amazing and, according to mum, was a wonderfully gooey and indulgent treat which, again, she polished off.

The meal left us with heavy stomachs, but high praise for the restaurant.

The staff were friendly and chatty, happy to talk about the food and their own favourites, and the vibe was a good one, full of positivity and happy chat, while the restaurant itself felt comfy and, of the three I’ve visited for practice nights, this might be the best one so far.

If you like Barbecue and spice and flavour, you could do worse than to get yourself to Hickory’s on Wolverhampton Road for a nice night out. Make sure to pack a bib as it could get messy.