Snack Attack: S’mores Bars at the Smoke Shop

S’mores Bars from the Smoke Shop. / Photo by 451 Marketing.

Andy Husbands is an advocate of the classics. As the restaurateur behind Kendall Square’s new barbecue joint, the Smoke Shop, everything he serves, from his 1st Place Ribs to bacon collards, is rooted in something familiar. So when it came time to plan the restaurant’s dessert menu, one item seemed like a no-brainer to Husbands, he says.

“Because who hasn’t had s’mores, you know?”

But the chef didn’t want a simple s’more. He opted to turn the treat into a cookie bar, made from crushed graham crackers—“reverse engineering,” as he calls it—blended with butter and seasonings for a chewy take on a classic. The bar is mixed with Somerville-born Marshmallow Fluff, chunks of 80 percent Taza dark chocolate, and dusted with more graham cracker crust.

“We’ve been calling it a s’mores bar, but I think I’m going to call it the ‘Taste of Somerville,'” Husbands says.

The final product is available for $2 apiece. You don’t have to enjoy it by a campfire, but Husbands hopes these bars encapsulate the same nostalgic bliss and togetherness you would experience if you were gathered around one.

“It’s easy for my mind to go from dinner, to sitting around outside with friends and making s’mores at the end of the meal,” Husbands says. “Our job in hospitality is to forget about all the craziness going on, sit down and enjoy some ribs and s’mores. So let’s enjoy some comfort food.”

If your comfort food craving extends across the Charles River into Back Bay, look no further than Uni’s new binchotan grilled s’mores. If you’re unfamiliar with the Japanese grilling technique, the Washington Post once described it as “a charcoal that produces virtually no flames and no smoke, but generates the kind of hellish heat imagined in the pages of Milton or Dante.”

We’ll stick with our backyard campfires and let the chefs at Uni handle that one, then.

$2, The Smoke Shop, One Kendall Square, Cambridge, 617-577-7427, thesmokeshopbbq.com, Uni, 370 Commonwealth Ave., Boston, 617-536-7200, uni-boston.com.