The Prime Smokehouse is a southern-style restaurant in Raleigh that serves generous plates of smoked chicken, sausage, brisket, and ribs. Besides that, it entertains guests with live jazz on the weekends.

We've been to the Prime Smokehouse for both weekend Jazz and regular weeknight dinner. I decided to rate the place a 10 for atmosphere because the Jazz night was great. Of course, my sample size is limited. You can look on their website and see what artist is performing. You'll pay a $7.50 cover to eat there on a night with a jazz show. Besides the shows, the place is nicely decorated and professional as you would expect from a nice restaurant. Clean and nice!

Prices seemed reasonable. I paid about $18 for a large plate with 3 different types of smoked meat -- far more than I could eat at once. The smoked meats were all top-notch in my opinion, and the sides, salads, and cornbread were all good, too. On the salad, which we ordered with bbq pork, they definitely didn't skimp on the meat, which was nice.

The big drawback with the Prime Smokehouse was the service. There was basically only a single attendant in the entire restaurant (with some occasional help by another who seemed about 20% involved). Byron, the single waiter/bartender/host/cashier was extremely nice and did his job well, but I found it hard to comprehend how the place only employed a single person to fill all these roles. It was on a weeknight and the place wasn't that busy, true. But there were still maybe 10 sets of guests during the 90 minutes or so we were there. Many of these guests (including us) were not even greeted when we arrived (becuase the host was also the waiter). You stand around for 2 or 3 minutes until the waiter gets some free time. The result is a lot of waiting for everyone.

Actually, given the extreme understaffing, it was surprising that things went as quickly as they did. Service only seemed slightly slow overall for us, but there were others there who seemed to be waiting for a long time between ordering and food arriving.

The bottom line

The Prime Smokehouse is a great idea and I enjoyed both the food and the entertainment. But management really needs to do something about the service if they want to attract repeat customers. If you're in no hurry, give Prime Smokehouse a try. Or maybe our two experiences were flukes.