Ayesha Curry and Michael Mina Debut a Barbecue Restaurant on the Strip

Family Food Fight host Ayesha Curry teams up with chef Michael Mina to open an ode to all thing barbecued and smoked. International Smoke opens at the MGM Grand in Mina’s former Pub 1842 space with some of Curry’s favorite dishes, such as cornbread with a red curry butter, Mama Mina’s falafel, and smoked St. Louis ribs with a choice of barbecue sauce, a Vietnamese chili-lemongrass, or Korean sesame gochujang. That ode to global travel continues throughout the menu.

The Las Vegas menu features some new dishes including a whole pulled pork shank from the smoker in an al pastor sauce, served with corn tortillas and a pineapple salsa, along with braised Jamaican oxtail.

A roster of roasted shellfish opens the menu. Diners can shuck their way through Pacific oysters, Gulf shrimp, Alaskan king crab legs, a whole or half Maine lobster, or a shellfish platter heaped with oysters, shrimp, lobster, and crab and served table side with a lemongrass tea for $85.

The highlight of the menu, of course, features meats from the wood-fired grill — Ahi tuna, grilled swordfish, a flat iron steak, Delmonico rib-eye steak, a strip steak, and center-cut filet mignon. Each comes prepped with a red wine sauce, yuzu ponzu, or chipotle chimichurri before they’re cooked. One other smoked meat brings smoked Korean-style bone-in short rib.

The drinks menu includes a cold smoked Old Fashioned, Curry’s Gina Jamaica with vodka and Pisco, and the Smoke Signals with Basil Hayden bourbon, cardamom, and corazon bitters, all smoked in a glass box, along with three punch bowls meant to serve four to six people.

Curry originally opened International Smoke with Mina as a pop-up restaurant in the San Francisco-based Mina Test Kitchen in 2016, debuted it as a restaurant in 2017, and expanded to Aventura, Florida, and Del Mar, California, closing the Houston outpost in December.

International Smoke, MGM Grand, 3799 Las Vegas Blvd. S., 702-891-3922. Open daily from 5 to 10:30 p.m.

• All Coverage of International Smoke [ELV]