Two years later, Smoke Queen is still rewriting the rules of barbecue

Two years after opening Smoke Queen Barbecue’s first brick-and-mortar location in Garden Grove, Winnie Yee, one of the country’s few female pitmasters, still sometimes catches herself looking around the restaurant in disbelief.

On weekends, which are almost always busy, she glances at the line, the packed tables and customers who know her by name and feel the same rush she did on opening day in March 2024.

“I just get teary-eyed,” said Yee. “I walk in and see all these people here, and it just hits me how far this has come.”

For Yee, the two-year mark is more than a business anniversary. It’s a milestone that still feels improbable for someone who started smoking brisket in flip-flops in her backyard during the pandemic, mostly as a distraction from financial and global stressors.

“I never imagined that the very first brisket I put in the smoker, in my backyard, in the middle of the night would manifest into something like this,” she said, looking around the patio at her lauded restaurant. “It became something much more than just barbecue.”

This journey has also been a personal one, too.

Yee immigrated from Malaysia in 1987, landing first in Garden Grove with family before eventually settling elsewhere in Orange County. At the time, she was only 6, spoke no English and spent her early years trying to blend in by disappearing in the background.

ALSO READ: Winnie Yee-Lakhani’s Smoke Queen Barbecue makes its brick-and-mortar debut

“I grew up wanting to fit in,” she said. “I didn’t feel like I belonged in this country until my forties. I grew up feeling like I looked different, like I had to hide the parts of who I was, even the food my mom packed for me.”

That history makes Smoke Queen’s success — and its Garden Grove location, a stone’s throw from Little Saigon — feel less like a coincidence than a return.

“It feels like a homecoming,” said Yee. That sense of arrival can be found all over the menu.

Yee’s food still draws from the Central Texas playbook — i.e., ribs and smoked meats done with patience and precision. But she has continued to push the menu beyond straightforward barbecue. A newly added wagyu tri-tip, smoked low and slow before being chilled, then seared to order, has reshaped how she thinks about texture. The Mapo chili is a must. And the panang curry studded with tender chunks of brisket (also available with smoked pulled pork or a la Pit Madam with brisket, pulled pork, pork belly and sausage) remains one of the best dishes across Orange County.

Even dessert carries Yee’s imprint, like the pandan banana pudding made with hand-extracted pandan leaf in lieu of vanilla, which lends the dish both its pastel green hue and ever-so-slightly grassy, nutty notes.

But the pork belly char siu remains the clearest expression of her approach. Chinese in flavor, Central Texas in technique. “The cause is 100% Chinese,” said Yee. “But the cooking method is American, low and slow. That’s who I am.”

The audience at Smoke Queen reflects that duality. A recent visit showed a diverse gaggle of diners, many of them young and sporting Dodgers blue on game day, as well as older Garden Grove residents who clearly know where to find good food. Yee said one of her biggest surprises has been how deeply the food resonates with older Asian immigrants, including customers who remind of her own parents.

“They come in and think, ‘This doesn’t look familiar,’ but then they taste it and say, ‘Oh, this tastes like home,’” she said.

Running a brick-and-mortar, however, has brought a different kind of education to Yee. A pop-up could be paused, but a conventional eatery demands more rigorous consistency. “If our employees can’t show up, you’ve got to show up,” she said. “And if the brisket is not in the smoker, you’ve got to make sure it is.” (For the curious, Smoke Queen’s smokers can be spotted smack dab in front of the restaurant.)

Her biggest challenge now is a good one: keeping up. Smoke Queen could use more space, she said. She also praised her staff, saying, “I could pick a handful of them who would step into the fire for me, which is freaking amazing.” It’s a refreshing antidote in an industry often defined by craven chefs and ego-jacked bosses.

There’s also little things that most customers might miss, but Yee doesn’t, like setting out spa water rather than plain iced water for customers waiting in line — “If we care about our water, what are customers going to think about our food?” she said — and the tucked-away hand washing sink, located on the patio, allows for immediate cleansing of barbecue detritus.

An upcoming brunch series is slated to start in May. Yee, who also has a cookbook forthcoming christened “Chinese-American Barbecue” with a forward by Jet Tila and a slate of food partnerships (Lee Kum Kee and the Dodgers, to name two), said the deeper reward has been building something visible for people who rarely saw themselves reflected in the industry.

“If a small, petite Asian woman can infiltrate the American barbecue industry and have a seat at the table,” she said, “the sky’s the limit for everybody.”

Find it: 12941 Ninth St., Garden Grove