'The food is amazing': Meet the owners of a new smokehouse at a well-known boat restaurant on the River Nene in Northampton

The Smoke Craft officially opened last week on the boat moored near Bedford Road, serving brisket, beef short rib, spicy chicken and homemade mac and cheese from a converted floating venue overlooking the River Nene.

Owner Ali, 45, runs the business with his wife Zohreh, also 45, while raising their two children aged eight and nine.

The menu includes beef brisket (£22), beef short rib (£24), spicy chicken (£18), homemade chilli, loaded fries and cheesecake, with food smoked and prepared in-house in a commercial kitchen below deck.

Speaking to the Chronicle & Echo, Ali said the idea for the restaurant came after eating out and deciding he wanted to create something himself.

He said: “Quite honestly, we ate somewhere and I thought, ‘I can make it better than this.’”

Ali continued: “Everything’s made from scratch.

“The cheese sauce, the vegetarian chilli, the rice, the brisket, the short rib, the chicken – all of that is made in-house.

“Most restaurants nowadays, what you’re getting is something they’ve ordered that they’re reheating in the microwave.

“As soon as people taste it, they can tell the difference.”

He added: “You come to us like you come to my house for a barbecue. You’re getting what I’ve cooked.

“There’s nothing fancy – but the food I’m confident about. The food is amazing.”

Ali said quality was one of the main reasons for opening the restaurant.

He said: “I could have turned it into a smash burger place and bought frozen burger pucks and chucked them on a grill, but I don’t.

“My kids eat it. When you’re at home, you tell your kids not to eat junk. Why would I feed that to my kids and other people’s kids? That’s what’s important to me.”

Asked about the challenge of maintaining quality while making a profit, Ali said: “It’s almost impossible, but I kind of live by this principle that if you do something with integrity, it will eventually pay off.”

He added: “If it didn’t matter to me, I wouldn’t be doing 22-hour days.”

Ali, whose background is in engineering and retail, said barbecue had been part of his life since childhood growing up in an Iranian family.

He said: “Being Iranian, barbecue is like a staple, you know, meat, fire, that kind of thing.

“I grew up here in the UK, but my parents’ generation were very old-school Iranian.

“We always had the whole family and a whole bunch of friends around the house every weekend. You know how British culture is Sunday roast? Ours was Sunday barbecue.

“It didn’t matter if it was December and snowing, there was still a barbecue out there."

He continued: “From about the age of 10 or 11 they figured out that I could do it and they just left me to it.

“Guests coming to the house would be freaked out because they’d see this little kid dragging bags of charcoal through and then walking around with matches.

“They’d tell my dad, ‘Should he have matches?’ and my dad would be like, ‘Yeah, he’s just looking for the petrol.’”

He added: “For me, at the age of 11 or 12, it was normal that on a Sunday my dad would do the prep, my mum would do the rice and I’d be outside cooking.

“I’d be doing 80 skewers of mince kebab, 40 chicken skewers, tomatoes, onions – and that was just normal for me.

“You develop an understanding because part of it is science and biochemistry, but there’s also an artistic side of it.

“When you see places saying they do 10-hour smoked brisket, I’m like, well, I cook briskets with four probes in each one. One takes 12 hours, one takes 14 hours, one takes nine hours. It depends on the intramuscular fat.”

The family spent several months transforming the venue before opening the smokehouse, which seats around 24 people inside, with additional seating on the top deck and outdoor seating overlooking the meadow and the River Nene.

Dogs are welcome in the outdoor seating area, but not inside the restaurant.

Ali said he wanted the venue to feel relaxed and welcoming whether people were visiting for food, drinks or coffee.

He said: “I want people to be happy and comfortable.

“You don’t have to come here just for food. You can sit outside and have a coffee or a beer and just relax by the water.

“We’ve got coffee, muffins, cookies, beers, all that kind of stuff.

“You’re coming to have a barbecue with me and my family.”

Ali said he wanted the venue to focus on food rather than becoming a bar.

He said: “We’ve got a bar and spirits, but I’ve put them all away because I didn’t want it to turn into a bar that also has food on the side.

“I wanted it the other way around. I wanted it to have that family atmosphere.”

The business recently received the highest possible food hygiene rating – five stars out of five – following an inspection.

The Smoke Craft is open Wednesday to Saturday from 12pm to 10pm and Sundays from 12pm to 9pm.

The boat was previously home to vegan cafe The Ark, which first opened in 2018 before closing in January 2026.