Frontier BBQ and Smokehouse

Frontier BBQ and Smokehouse runs on a single premise: pay once, then build the plate yourself out of a smokehouse spread that keeps coming back. The all-you-can-eat format is the point, and the first plate writes itself — Frontier's Famous Smoked Beef Brisket, baby back ribs, BBQ pulled pork, and crispy broasted chicken, with baked beans and mac and cheese filling the gaps between them. The kitchen has worked this Fallsview-corridor dinner format since 2016, sitting on Stanley Avenue close enough to the tourist crush to draw the crowd, far enough into a focused barbecue identity that it has never tried to be a generic buffet. Most places this near the Falls sell convenience; Frontier sells appetite.

The spread is deeper than the four headline meats. Beyond the brisket and ribs, the grill turns out farmer's sausage, smoked BBQ chicken legs, smoked wings, and a bacon-wrapped meatloaf, and the hot buffet runs chili, super sweet baked beans, and a daily chef's soup alongside homestyle mac and cheese. There is an Ultimate Potato Bar and a brisket hash for the diners who treat sides as a course of their own, a soup-and-bread station that closes the gaps, and house-made BBQ sauces to swing each plate sweeter or sharper. Buffalo chicken sliders sit on the handhelds end; apple crumble and s'mores wait at the dessert end. The breadth is built so a table of mixed appetites rarely fights over the same thing twice.

The Southern lean is real, not decorative. Underneath the barbecue is a comfort-food kitchen — broasted and southern fried chicken, cornbread and rolls off the bread station, the baked beans and the mac and cheese doing the heavy lifting that keeps the meal from reading as only ribs and brisket. The American and Southern threads give the smoked meats a wider table to sit at, and they are the reason the buffet can carry a plate for someone who came for chicken and sides as readily as it carries one for the brisket purist.

What the format rewards is pacing. This is a meal best read as a focused smokehouse spread rather than a long a la carte dinner, and the smarter tables work it that way — anchor the plate on smoked meat, then use the sides to stretch the meal across a second and third trip. It is barbecue as comfort food, served buffet-style, which is exactly why it holds up for hungry groups: everyone builds a plate around brisket, ribs, chicken, and sides without anyone having to order for the table. Adult and children pricing and a local-resident discount keep the math friendly for a crowd that arrives with different appetites.

The week carries its own logic. Thursday is the value night, with a dinner-and-drinks-for-two offer and a complimentary draught beer or sangria tied to an adult buffet dinner. Sunday is the family night, when kids ten and under eat free against a qualifying adult dinner during the early evening service. Friday and Saturday push the smokehouse a little further into a night out, with live music on the patio. And for the meal that leaves the building, a takeout menu runs its own lane — a fifteen-piece chicken combo and a full-rack rib combo, each packed with corn, slaw, fries, and ciabatta rolls for a barbecue dinner that travels.

The one thing worth doing before a visit is calling ahead. The dinner window is narrow — Friday through Sunday, opening in the late afternoon — and the restaurant's own site carries current hours, reservations, and menu files next to a temporary closure-and-reopening note. That makes timing the variable, not the food. The format itself is settled: smoke the meats, set out the stations, and let a table eat at its own pace until it is done.