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The Bay Area barbecue scene is changing. Longtime institutions have closed, a prominent Peninsula chain substantially downsized and barbecue pop-ups have considerably grown within the last decade.
I talked with six pitmasters who are making their mark on the Peninsula barbecue scene as well as a barbecue expert to understand what trends are markers of the local barbecue scene and where the future of the cuisine is heading.
There are three predominant trends shaping the barbecue industry in California, said Adrian Miller, Stanford University graduate and author of the James Beard Award-winning book “Black Smoke,” which discusses how African Americans shaped the barbecue we know today.
One trend is an increase in healthier versions of barbecue, he said, such as Vegan Mob, an Oakland-based vegan barbecue spot with an outpost in San Bruno.
Additionally, Miller has seen an increase in Latino-influenced barbecue and other ethnic-fusion varieties, such as Filipino-influenced Dom’s Nom’s in Belmont.
But perhaps the biggest trend is a boom in Texas-style barbecue, particularly Central Texas-style, which is characterized by smoked brisket, pork ribs and hot gut sausage (smoked sausage stuffed into natural casings) with a dry rub and smoked over mesquite, pecan or oak wood.
Barbecue’s beginnings
Miller explained the term barbecue is typically conflated with smoking, but the true definition of barbecue is cooking whole animals, or quarters of a cow, over a trench filled with hardwood burning coals.
“I argue that barbecue is Native American in its foundation, and then later Europeans and enslaved Africans were brought into the mix to create something distinctively that we now know as barbecue,” Miller said.
One person would regularly flip the meat for even cooking, and another would sauce it to keep it moist and add flavor. More often than not, it was African Americans manning the barbecue pit.
“It was hard work, and anytime you want to have somebody do hard work and not pay for it, get the marginalized people,” Miller said. “In this case, it was enslaved people in the American South, because white people weren’t going to do that work for free.”
In the 20th century, people began barbecuing with smaller cuts of meat due to health code regulations and a lack of space, and immigrants brought their own meat-smoking traditions with them to the United States, Miller explained.
In Central Texas, immigrants from Central Europe opened butcher shops and smoked unusual odd cuts of meat to sell to ranch hands and oil field workers, creating the Texas-style barbecue that we know today, Miller said.
“Anyone who has deep roots in barbecue today…there’s a high probability that the people running that restaurant are either African American, or they got their knowledge on barbecue cooking from an African American at some point,” Miller said.
The Lone Star State’s legacy
The majority of Peninsula barbecue spots specialize in Texas-style barbecue.
“Texas-style has just become very in vogue,” said John Capelo, owner of Capelo’s Barbecue in Redwood City. Hailing from Texas himself, he agrees he hasn’t seen other types of regional barbecue consistently available along the Peninsula.
Russell Savage, owner of Pico’s BBQ, a pop-up in Redwood City, said he thinks California has the best Texas-style barbecue outside of Texas.
“I’m glad to see that Texas barbecue is catching on, and more and more people are doing it (along the Peninsula),” Savage said.
Born and raised in Palo Alto, Savage spent five years in Texas learning barbecue before moving back home to the Bay Area to start his business. He began with weekly pop-ups in Menlo Park in March, moving his operation to Redwood City in June. He said the mark of Texas barbecue is its simplicity.
“It’s mostly just salt and pepper, a lot of beef because Texas is a cattle state,” Savage said. “Turning a humble ingredient, like a big piece of tough brisket, into something really delicious appealed to me because I love…when ingredients on their own aren’t special, but when you marry them together for hours and hours, they create something pretty amazing.”
Even Domino Corcega’s Filipino-inspired barbecue and Toriano Gordon’s vegan barbecue are inspired by Texas-style barbecue.
“My grandparents and my uncle would come from Texas, and (my uncle) showed me how to barbecue…and a big reason why I wanted to open a barbecue restaurant is because he always wanted to open one, and he showed me what he knew when I was growing up,” said Gordon, the Vegan Mob founder.
Author Adrian Miller explained the popularity of Central Texas-style barbecue was likely influenced by three factors. One was the immense popularity of Franklin’s Barbecue in Austin, Texas, which opened in 2009. Owner Aaron Franklin “became the face of barbecue,” Miller said.
Another factor was the increase in barbecue competition shows, where emphasis was placed on difficult cuts of meat, such as pork shoulder and brisket, the latter of which is a staple of Texas-style barbecue.
Yet another turning point for Texas-style barbecue was when Texas Monthly became the first publication to hire a full-time barbecue editor.
“The media started focusing on Central Texas, and then it just overshadowed everything,” Miller said.
Cooking to her own beat
The interior of Hip Hop BBQ Shack in San Bruno. Photo by Anna Hoch-Kenney. 
Framed photos of hip-hop and rap icons, including a photo of Chef Mae and local rapper Tupac on the far right, decorate the counterspace under a chalkboard menu at Hip Hop BBQ Shack in San Bruno. Photo by Anna Hoch-Kenney. 
Candied Jack Daniels rib tips, homemade bread and kickass southern greens at Hip Hop BBQ Shack in San Bruno. Photo by Anna Hoch-Kenney.
One of the few Peninsula barbecue joints not leaning into Texas-style barbecue is Hip Hop BBQ Shack in San Bruno. Chef Mae, whose family is from Mississippi and Louisiana, is serving Memphis-style barbecue with a side of hip-hop.
“Music and food, it goes hand in hand,” she said.
Memphis-style barbecue is known for dry-rubbed ribs and pulled pork and is often served with a tomato-based sauce on the side.
The walls of Chef Mae’s barbecue shack are filled with hip-hop memorabilia from the 1980s. Find autographed pictures from Too Short, E-40, Mistah F.A.B. and even a picture of Chef Mae with Tupac. And, of course, hip-hop plays through the speakers.
Chef Mae was born and raised in San Francisco and grew up in her parents’ butcher shop and smokehouse. She opened her barbecue restaurant in 2022, offering “boozed out barbecue” such as Jack Daniels baby back ribs and brandy-smoked pulled pork.
“I adorn everything I do in alcohol,” she said. “I have an absolute passion to yummy your tummy. When you come in here…I want you to think and know that you are in your granny’s kitchen, where it’s cooked with love and from scratch.”
Fusion at the fire pit
Besides an increase in Central Texas-style barbecue, Miller sees an uptick in barbecue influenced by a variety of cultures. In Alameda and San Francisco, Fikscue is serving halal Texas-style barbecue with an Indonesian twist. Go south to Morgan Hill, and Ricky’s Grill BBQ is churning out Mexican fusion barbecue.
Along the Peninsula, Dom’s Nom’s is crafting Texas- and Filipino-influenced barbecue. Founder Corcega established his barbecue pop-up in 2018, inspired by his Filipino heritage.
Corcega was born in the Philippines and is a longtime Redwood City resident. He graduated from the California Culinary Academy in 2006 and worked at corporate high-end restaurants as a cook and a line cook. But during his career, there was one type of food that stood out to him: barbecue.
“It brings a lot of family and friends together,” he said. “It’s just a simple gathering, a family-oriented gathering.”
Corcega has worked full time at a law firm for more than two decades and was working part time as a lead cook at Palo Alto Hills Golf and Country Club until around 2014. It was during that time when he began thinking about starting his own business.
Corcega said Dom’s Nom’s barbecue is Texas-style in its foundation, but he adds nontraditional ingredients in his marinades and rubs, including star anise and five-spice powder. His menu includes Texas-style brisket rubbed with salt and black pepper and smoked in oak wood, and he sometimes offers sticky galbi smoked beef ribs.
Working out of a Belmont commercial kitchen, Dom’s Nom’s mostly does catering, corporate events and private parties, but it can also be found popping up at local breweries, including Alpha Acid Brewing, Blue Oak Brewing and Devil’s Canyon Brewing Company. He hopes to open a brick-and-mortar restaurant in about three to four years.
Plants, not pigs
Corcega noted that he often gets catering requests asking for vegetarian options, which he can accommodate.
“Thank God for those people that make Impossible burgers because now you can manipulate that fake meat to create your sausages with it,” he said. “Or you can create your own smoked sausage, from tofu to quinoa to all those vegetarian-friendly ingredients.”
Capelo said that all of his sides at Capelo’s Barbecue are vegetarian and that most of them are vegan.
“You have to just innovate, because with our catering business, I’ll go and cater a company, and then 30% of them or more are vegan or vegetarian,” Capelo said.
One innovator of vegetarian and vegan-friendly barbecue options is Vegan Mob. Founded in 2019 in Oakland, Vegan Mob now has three locations, including ones in Vallejo and San Bruno, and offers plant-based versions of brisket, hot links and rib tips made from soy protein and mushroom.
The idea for Vegan Mob came about when Gordon, who grew up eating barbecue in San Francisco, was in grad school to become a therapist. A vegan since 2018 for health reasons, he missed the flavor of the barbecue he grew up with. Inspired by his uncle, who taught him how to cook Texas-style barbecue, he opened Vegan Mob.
“I would describe (Vegan Mob’s barbecue) as any other barbecue, it’s just not meat,” Gordon said. “I want it to be just as good as the original.”
Gordon said he hopes to expand Vegan Mob “all around the world,” and he’s in the early stages of exploring franchising in Las Vegas and New Jersey.
Gordon said a big change he’s noticed in the barbecue scene is the lack of Black-owned barbecue spots in San Francisco. Leon’s Bar-B-Q closed shortly after its founder’s death in 1999, Big Nate’s Barbecue shuttered in 2010 and Brother-in-law’s BBQ closed in 2012.
“It’s not like it used to be,” Gordon said. “It’s not the same as the ones I grew up on.”
‘Little flames’
John Capelo, owner of Capelo’s Barbecue, outside the business’ kitchen in Redwood City. Photo by Magali Gauthier. 
John Capelo, owner of Capelo’s Barbecue, checks some meat in a smoke outside the business’ kitchen in Redwood City. Photo by Magali Gauthier. 
John Capelo, owner of Capelo’s Barbecue, checks on brisket and pork that has been cooking overnight in a smoker in the business’ kitchen in Redwood City. Photo by Magali Gauthier.
Recently, some established brick-and-mortar barbecue restaurants along the Peninsula have shuttered. 3 Pigs BBQ, which opened in San Carlos in 2015 and expanded to San Mateo and Half Moon Bay, has permanently closed all of its locations, and Armadillo Willy’s, established in 1983, closed five of its six remaining restaurants this year. QBB, which opened in 2017 in Mountain View, also shuttered last year.
At the same time, a slew of pop-ups has entered the Peninsula barbecue scene.
“I’ve seen little pockets pop up of barbecue that seem like small, little flames now, but hopefully they grow the restaurants,” said Capelo, who started a small catering business in 2008 that expanded to his brick-and-mortar restaurant Capelo’s Barbecue in 2020.
Other barbecue business owners that transitioned from pop-ups to brick and mortars include Wyatt Fields of Breakwater Barbecue in El Granada and Gordon of Vegan Mob. Fields started a catering business in 2014, opening his brick and mortar in El Granada in 2020 before moving to a bigger location in the neighborhood earlier this year. Gordon started Vegan Mob as a pop-up in early 2019 and opened his first brick and mortar later that year.
Dom’s Nom’s and Pico’s BBQ are currently pop-ups, but Corcega and Savage both hope to open restaurants in the next three years or so.
Getting into the barbecue business isn’t for the faint of heart, Savage said, as meat prices are high and labor hours are long. He personally works 70 hours a week.
“Barbecue is not the most lucrative form of food sales,” he said. “It requires a lot of specific skill…So you really, really got to love it, and you got to devote a ton of hours of time to it.”
Savage pops up just once a week from noon until he’s sold out, which is usually around 3 p.m.
“People will literally line up for hours to eat it and travel from afar, and I never experienced any other type of food that really does that,” Savage said.
In the barbecue business, planning is paramount. If you run out for the day, you can’t just make more.
“You can’t just throw a whole brisket on the grill,” said Fields, owner of Breakwater Barbecue. “It’s a 14-hour process.”
Fields grew up barbecuing on the beach in Half Moon Bay. In 2014, he started Native Catering, a barbecue and new American cuisine catering company, rebranding to Breakwater Barbecue when he opened his brick-and-mortar restaurant in El Granada in 2020.
In 2023, Fields’ restaurant was added to the Michelin Guide, and in May he moved Breakwater Barbecue to a larger location a mile north that was originally a historic train station, one of the original stops on the Ocean Shore Railroad.
The fire keeps burning
Fields said he’s seeing somewhat of a craft barbecue movement along the Peninsula, comparing it to the craft beer movement.
“A lot of chain barbecue restaurants, they’ll throw their meat products in the smoker and set the timer…and then they’ll just come back in 12 hours and just open up the chamber,” he said. “With craft barbecue, you have to do everything by hand. You’re really watching the fire. You’re taking care of the products in your smoker on a deeper level than just doing the opposite with the electric smokers.”
He thinks the future of barbecue restaurants will be very community-driven, with a pitmaster being like a local butcher.
Despite rising meat costs, these pitmasters agreed demand for barbecue remains high.
“Greatest challenges for selling barbecue in the Bay Area? For me, selling out,” Chef Mae said. “I only cook enough for 150 people, and I sell it every day, and people come mad.”
Savage said he’s not sure what the future of Bay Area barbecue holds, but he’s certain about one thing – it’s sticking around.
“You’re putting all your differences aside, sharing a meal with a stranger, potentially, at a communal table,” he said. “So that style of eating and the culture that barbecue kind of brings with it will probably keep it pretty relevant here.”
“At a time when the world needs to come together, through the adversities that we have, barbecue is the best food, the best picnic, cook-off type of setting for all walks of life to come together…That is what barbecue is all about,” Chef Mae said.
Breakwater Barbecue, 10151 Cabrillo Highway, El Granada; 650-713-5303, Instagram: @breakwaterbarbecue. Open Thursday to Sunday from noon to 7 p.m.
Capelo’s Barbecue, 2655 Middlefield Road, Redwood City; 650-701-5433, Instagram: @capelosbarbecue. Open Tuesday to Sunday from 11 a.m. to 8 p.m.
Dom’s Nom’s, 200 Old Country Road, Belmont; Instagram: @doms_noms_eats.
Hip Hop BBQ Shack, 223 El Camino Real, San Bruno; 650-826-3406, Instagram: @hiphopbbqshack. Open Monday to Saturday from noon to 10 p.m. and Sunday from 2-10 p.m.
Pico’s BBQ, 459 Seaport Court, Redwood City; Instagram: @picosbbq. Open Saturday from noon to 3 p.m.
Vegan Mob, 1199 El Camino Real, San Bruno; 628-628-0281, Instagram: @officialveganmob. Open Tuesday to Thursday and Sunday from 11 a.m. to 10 p.m., Friday and Saturday from 11 a.m. to midnight.
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