Forget to Remember to Forget: Opening a BBQ Joint

Dry-Rubbed Babyback Ribs and Pork Belly with My Red Hook Red Sauce @ Fletcher's Brooklyn Barbecue.

Well, Fletcher's Brooklyn Barbecue is coming closer and closer to opening. Right now we are finishing off last minute aesthetic touches (a missing piece of stainless steel here, a coat of stain there), and any big nagging mechanical issues while simultaneously interviewing potential staff, sourcing ingredients, creating the paperwork that will be the backbone of the Back of House operations, writing-testing-re-testing recipes and drilling into the ingredients in each recipe and whether there are two similar ingredients that can become just one compromise ingredient that works for both recipes. From a cost perspective, maybe you don't need granulated onion and onion powder, for instance.

In some cases recipes were tested at home and we want to be sure they work in the, currently-bare-bones kitchen in which we are working.

Fire-Suppression Inspection should be tomorrow. Once that passes we should be able to get gas turned on to run the stove, oven and grill....From there, we are a hop-skip to the health department and all lights switching to "GO!". Unfortunately, what can be written in a few sentences, will most likely take weeks to happen.

I foresee a late-september opening becoming an early-October opening....