Mary Jane Bourbon & Smokehouse jumped onto the scene with a big splash in 2018. Nearly four years later they’re still making waves with fun festive events, cool contests, and an ever evolving menu that never fails to impress. Located on Broadway in Cape Girardeau, Mary Jane Bourbon & Smokehouse has very quickly become an area favorite and a top destination location, bringing tourists from across the country and around the world to sample the decadently delicious dishes.
573 Magazine recently stopped in for a visit with our friends at Mary Jane Bourbon & Smokehouse to enjoy some of our favorite foods and check out what’s new.
This is a meaty, MEATY sandwich.
The Steak & Egg Sammy with 5 ounces of slow-smoked prime rib, bacon, cheddar cheese (is what we had, but you can choose your cheese for this sammich:) and a sunny-side up egg all on a house bun. It. Is. Epic. The golden yolk just runs right over the meat and soaks into the bun the moment you take that first bite! (Now, don’t worry, you can choose how your egg is cooked, not everyone likes theirs to be sopped up by biscuits like we do!) The blend of the bacon, the steak and the egg together makes for a really hearty, very filling sandwich that is full of flavor. Everything is seasoned just perfectly. This is a meaty, MEATY sandwich. Perfect for that carnivore in your life! And to top it off, it comes with plenty of Mary Jane’s amazing house steakfries…enough to share. ;)
An instant favorite...
Next up is the BBQ Tater Skins. With smoked pulled pork, provel cheese, buttermilk parmesan dressing, porter BBQ sauce, and pickled jalapenos & scallions, this appetiser stole the show. The complexity and variety of the ingredients created a medley of taste! The sweet, heat, and savory spice all cooled down with the buttermilk dressing, had my palette reeling in a symphony of YUM! An instant favorite, this dish had the whole table mumbling high praises excitedly with very full mouths.
The flavor just absolutely pops giving it that wow factor.
The Smoked Trinity at Mary Jane Bourbon & Smokehouse is friggin phenomenal! You get 3 amazing smoked meats, turkey, pulled pork & ribs, and 2 sides. And oh my God, it’s SO good. Super, super moist white meat turkey. The flavor just absolutely pops giving it that wow factor. The pulled pork is absolutely delicious. Tender, juicy, and bursting with flavor. The ribs with barbeque sauce just falls right off the bone. Again, the meat is tender, juicy, and the added sweet and slight tang from the sauce really makes it stand out. Served with roasted green beans with bacon, garlic, and onion, and 2 pieces of Texas toast with a golden slightly crisp outside and soft warm buttery middle, this meaty meal is a hearty treat!
...melt-in-your-mouth scrumptious!
The Smoked Pork Steak comes with 2 sides, and could feed a whole village! LOL. Seriously! This is a HUGE cut of meat. But size isn’t everything right? Well, it is when it’s this melt-in-your-mouth scrumptious! Of course, it was a moment before I found out. Surprisingly enough, the first thing on the plate I just had to try was the Brussel Sprouts, and my instincts did not let me down! The sprouts totally stole the show, roasted with bacon, onions, garlic and some kind of sweet garlic aioli with a mystery flavor I couldn’t quite put my finger on. They were so addictive I had to remind myself not to fill up on them before getting to taste the steak!
Everytime we come here, this place seems to top itself again and again! What’s their secret?
“I’ve been working with Carisa for about 9 years. I started out at Mary Jane Burgers & Brew about 7 months after they opened and we’ve been running ever since!” - Executive Chef, Matt Ruessler
Matt Ruessler, Executive Chef and Co-creator of the menus for Mary Jane Bourbon & Smokehouse, Mary Jane Burgers & Brew, AND JStreet BrewCo (which he also Co-owns) gave us the 411.
573 Magazine: First of all…Compliments. To. The. Chef! How do you get your meats so tender and juicy?! White meat turkey is normally at least a little dry, but not yours, why?
We do a process where we brine our turkey. It helps maintain moisture. Although, I gotta give a lot of the credit to the guys on the staff that cook all the meats, you know. They’re the ones that really implement everything. I’m here, helping out where I need to be, but the guys that work with us, they do a great job. We have a slew of amazing smokers here; Zach, Freddy, Devin, Jordan…they all help back there with me. It’s very much a team effort.
573 Magazine: Can you tell us more about the menu items we tried today, like the potato skins?
Yes! The potato skins are somewhat new to the menu. They’re pretty straight forward. They got our pulled pork on there, and then we top it with our buttermilk parmesan dressing, our house barbeque which is a porter barbeque, and jalapenos & scallions. It’s a crowd favorite.
Another one that’s really popular is our Smoked Trinity. That one comes with 3 boned ribs, the sliced turkey we were talking about earlier, and some of our pulled pork as well. It comes with 2 sides and we garnish it with our house zucchini pickles, pickled onions and some Texas toast. If you want a little sample of everything, it’s the route you need to go.
573 Magazine: You know another thing that really stood out was the Brussel Sprouts. That garlic sauce you had on there, there was some sweetness to that…
There is. So, there’s some honey in the dressing…the sprouts, those are something that’s very true to me. I love that dish. The dressing has some honey in it, so that’s where you get the sweetness. Although in my opinion, the biggest flavor component that comes from there is, there’s actually little anchovies in the dressing.
Really?!
Yeah! I know most people, when they hear anchovies they think, “Ah anchovy pizza…Ew, I don’t like anchovies,” but you know, used subtly they can really round out things, adding some earthiness and salt to things. The dressing works out great with those hearty brussel sprouts and they got that little bit of char and crisp on the edges…I love them!
573 Magazine: We agree! Absolutely delicious! So, how about the sandwich? That thing is massive! Can you tell me more about that?
We do a Brunch every Saturday & Sunday. We open up at 10:00 and it’s awesome. We get a great crowd for the brunches, and that’s kind of our special breakfast sandwich that we do. It’s smoked prime rib and your choice of cheese, bacon, an egg (however you like it) and it comes on our house bun (same one we use up in Perryville at Burgers & Brew) it’s out of Hoeckele’s Bakery in Perryville. It’s a local, everything seeded bun, and it works fantastically for what we need it for.
we do everything we can to stay local.
Anytime we get the opportunity, we try our best to source locally. My favorite season is actually mushroom season. We got a lot of mushroom foragers that come in and sell us mushrooms. Those are really good times because there’s some quality mushrooms in this area, especially in Missouri.
But yeah, we do everything we can to stay local. We’re shopping around for rice right now. There’s a farm out in Castor River area that we’re trying. As it comes in, we use it up as much as we can.
We want people to go, “ Oh, Wow!”
As far as the menu, there’s always collaboration. We always get our managers involved. We always try out new menu items for features and get guest feedback. So there’s always some collaboration, but the final cut, the final decision always falls down to myself and Carisa. That way we know we’re giving out the best quality items that we can that all have that wow factor. We always try to do the best quality that we can and provide the best guest experience that we possibly can give. We don’t want to have a lot of stuff on the menu that’s just good. We want people to go, “ Oh, Wow!” and it just pops with everything we serve.
573 Magazine: Well, mission accomplished because you definitely have that! Every bite we took today had us saying, “WOW! This is SO GOOD!”
Well that just means you gotta come back right?
Exactly right. The Casino Royale NYE Party would be an epic time to return! If you haven’t got your tickets yet, then you better hurry! And be sure to visit Mary Jane Bourbon & Smokehouse today for a chance to WIN FREE TICKETS to the last big Mary Jane party of the year! Until then 573, be happy, be healthy, be well!