Before 1976, “Smokey” John Reaves was a Dallas roofing and construction man who smoked meat for the pure love of it. When a job wrapped up, he sometimes handed clients a smoked turkey or ham as a thank-you. Word spread and customers started asking whether they could buy what he was smoking. Demand grew so strong that, as the family tells it, Reaves stored extra turkeys in his mother-in-law’s bathtub. Slowly, the food outgrew the construction business.
In 1976, he turned the hobby into a business, taking over a vacant building at Lemmon Avenue and Mockingbird Lane. His son Juan, then five, remembers walking into the building with him and couldn’t imagine how this dingy little building was going to become a space where people ate. It opened as Big John’s and began to build a loyal customer base. One day a regular walked into the dining room, hazy with pit smoke, and joked that Reaves should call the place Smokey John’s. The name stuck, and so did the nickname.
From day one, it was a family affair. His wife, Gloria, known as “Mama Reaves,” kept the front of the house and the books in order. His cousin Douglas “Rent” Spraglin ran the pit. Everyone who came through the door was treated like kin.
John Reaves never advertised. He didn’t have to. In the late 1970s and early 1980s, Dallas Cowboys legends Drew Pearson and Harvey Martin invested in the restaurant, and whenever a camera found them, they mentioned it. There was no social media, but he didn’t need it because he had a whole slew of Dallas Cowboys signing his praises in interviews and bringing in their friends. The backing helped carry the brand beyond its first address and across Texas.
Around 1978, Reaves became only the second Black vendor at the State Fair of Texas. He did not treat the seat as a trophy. Through the 1980s he pushed to bring more minority vendors into Fair Park, and the number grew. That was the Reaves way. “Dad was always helping out folks, always donating and working with churches and schools, and it was never just about him,” Juan recalls. The Fair eventually became a pillar of the company’s success, a legacy the family has carried forward.
Brothers Brent and Juan Reaves took over the day-to-day operations in 2013 and tripled sales under their leadership. Just when things were looking up, a fire tore through the restaurant in 2017 forcing the brothers to rebuild from scratch. The State Fair, along with a thriving catering division, helped keep the business afloat. Brent credits supporters like Frost Bank, who backed the rebuild with a $300,000 loan, no collateral required. The brothers kept growing. Brent understands what the Fair demands: “Every year we have to create something that gets attention. I think our business, really every business, is predicated on attention.” Their inventions earned Big Tex Choice Awards for Best Taste, first for fried Jell-O in 2016, then for the Big Red Chicken Bread, a fried chicken wing atop a Big Red soda-flavored donut, in 2019. That second win came one day after their father’s death.
Television noticed. In 2021, A&E followed the brothers through the Fair in the reality series Deep Fried Dynasty. In 2024, they became the first vendor in State Fair history to cure its own pastrami for a New York-style deli booth, a project reportedly built on a year of research and more than 300 pounds of test brisket.
Back home, the Mockingbird Lane restaurant near Love Field remains the heartbeat: a cafeteria line of hickory-smoked ribs, brisket, mac and cheese and banana pudding that feeds thousands of lunchtime regulars each week. Behind it, a large-scale catering operation carries the Smokey John’s table well beyond the dining room.
Fifty years in, the brothers are not coasting. They are raising the bar on the brisket itself. The Reaves brothers recognize that Dallas barbecue is nothing like it was 20 years ago and to go from good to great they needed to have cutting edge equipment.
The proof is in the pit. In March, the restaurant brought in a new wood-fired smoker, built with J&R Manufacturing, that burns hickory with no gas at all, a nod to their father’s East Texas roots. It replaced the Southern Pride smoker that was cutting-edge when John Reaves adopted it, and the only thing left standing after the fire. Letting it go, Juan said, was “truly emotional.” It now works for a catering company.
The upgrade reaches the plate. The kitchen trims brisket more tightly for uniform, better-looking cuts, and a bit more black pepper in the house seasoning gives deeper color and flavor. Nothing is wasted: trimmings now become meatloaf, burgers, Salisbury steak and beef tips. It is the same instinct John Reaves had when he turned a thank-you gift into a business.
The brothers recently debuted a revised menu for the restaurant, featuring the “Steve White,” a longtime secret-menu plate of fried-to-order catfish and ribs, named for a customer of 30-some years whose memorial service was held at the restaurant.
The family’s reach now extends into Texas kitchens. Smokey John’s Bar-B-Que Rub, a 50-year-old recipe, is sold at H-E-B. A balanced blend of sweet and heat, it is meant to elevate steak, chicken and more, so a Sunday cookout anywhere in the state can borrow a little of the Mockingbird Lane pit. This November, just in time for the holidays, they will launch a new Sweet Potato Pie in Joe V’s grocery stores.
From a gift of smoked turkey and a vacant building to a Dallas institution, Smokey John’s remains what John Reaves made it: a table with room for everybody. Visit the Reaves brothers at their restaurant located at 1820 W Mockingbird Ln #18, Dallas, TX 75235 or order your holiday meal online at SmokeyJohns.com.
