Don’t go ‘anywhere near’ this new Meridian restaurant — unless you like a certain flavor

A new Meridian restaurant will open Tuesday with barbecue flavors paying homage to the Lone Star State.

And its Texas-born co-owner has a friendly warning for potential customers at Smokin’ Iron BBQ, 520 S. Meridian Road.

“What I do is very smoky, and it’s bold, and it’s got a nice kick,” Tonya Chandler said in a spring telephone interview. “If you don’t like smoky food, I wouldn’t come anywhere near 520 Meridian.”

She’s joking. Well, sort of. Confidence fills Chandler’s voice when she describes the cooking techniques she’ll use at Smokin’ Iron, which she owns with her husband, Larry, another Texas native.

Taking over a space that formerly held Los Mariachis restaurant across from Meridian Speedway, Smokin’ Iron will produce meats that are “very simple. Salt, pepper and smoke and a little bit of extra stuff in there. But I’m just very methodical. We have a process. It took me many, many years.”

“It starts in the particular brisket that we fire, which are Black Angus, and it starts with, like, butchering it down … we just have a particular way of doing it, a particular method. We do our own rubs, and we let meat rest, and it smokes very, very low and slow. We could be smoking things from 14 to 18 hours. It’s just a really old-school way … .”

The self-proclaimed “duchess of brisket,” Chandler owned bars and restaurants for decades in New York and Texas before she divested, retired (supposedly) and ended up in Idaho in 2017, she said.

The allure of sharing a taste of Texas with Idahoans drew her back into the game. “I feel like I have one more rodeo in me,” she explained.

Smokin’ Iron BBQ is not a large space — about 1,500 square feet — so it will be relatively “tight in there,” she said.

“I’ll open that kitchen up,” Chandler added. “You can pretty much see what we’re doing, how I’m doing it. When you’re getting served, you’re going to get that experience of an old meat market a little bit. I pull that meat out right in front of you, it gets butchered right in front of you, it gets plated right in front of you.”

Smokin’ Iron will offer five proteins. There also are fun menu options such as barbecue potatoes and simple sides.

And Larry’s chicken-wing recipe? “We smoke a wing that is just absolutely spectacular,” she said.

In addition to brisket, there’s a deep-smoked pork. “I don’t pull my pork … it’s more of a chop,” she said. “Ribs, we mainly do baby backs. I will do St. Louis-style, too, sometimes, but I prefer baby back myself. We have a couple sausages. And I want to expand on that quite a bit. I love sausage. And the chicken is only the smoked wing. That’s it.”

Chandler expects her award-winning brisket chili to be a hit, too. “It is absolutely killer,” she said.

Eventually, she intends to open additional Smokin’ Iron BBQ locations, she said.

But, for now, the focus is to offer Idahoans high-quality, authentic Texas barbecue at Meridian’s newest local restaurant.

“Everything is just falling in place for it,” she said.

Smokin’ Iron BBQ is open from 11 a.m. to 8 p.m. Tuesdays through Saturdays. Online: smokinironbbq.com.