Family-Style Barbecue Restaurant To Open In April

A new family-style barbecue restaurant will open in the Valley the first week of April.

Owners of O’Doherty’s Irish Grille and Arizona Steakhouse in downtown Spokane will open Smokey’s Family Barbecue at 11723 E. Sprague.

The new restaurant will serve family-style meals of smoked turkey, chicken and ribs, said Terry Best, partner with Tim and Sam O’Doherty and Tim’s brother, Shannon.

“We have had plans for quite a while to start a family barbecue restaurant. Eventually our goal is to have one at each end of town,” Best said.

The Valley restaurant will have an interior decor modeled after a Texas roadhouse, with corrugated tin and road signs, Best said. It will seat 60 to 80 people. Rather than offering full-service, sit-down dining, the restaurant customers will place food orders at a counter.

Work on the restaurant’s interior began earlier this month. Very few changes will be made to the exterior.

A new catering company, O’Doherty’s Catering Co., will also operate at the East Sprague restaurant. It will serve the smoked barbecue along with Irish fare such as corned beef and cabbage and pastes.

The restaurant will be open for lunch and dinner. Prices range from $4 to $6 for lunch and $5 to $8 for dinner.

Nursing home waiting to open doors

Sunshine Terrace, a new 70-bed nursing home next to Sunshine Gardens on the corner of Ninth Avenue and Raymond Road, is awaiting an occupancy permit from Washington state before opening.

Just when that final OK will come from the state Department of Social and Health Services “is the $64 million question,” said Nathan Dikes, vice president Sunshine Health Facilities.

The $2.5 million, 34,000-square foot care facility has a community dining hall, a multipurpose room and a mix of private and shared rooms for patients.

Of the facility’s 70 beds, 30 will be used for fast-track care to get people back to home and in better health. The remaining are for longer term care, Dikes said.

, DataTimes