Moss - Buxton Hall Barbecues Book of Smoke: Wood-Smoked Meat, Sides, and More

In February 2013, I had just been nominated for a James Beard Best Chef Southeast award and I was planning my first restaurant as an owner: Buxton was just getting off the ground when, in a matter of months, everything came crashing down. I parted ways with my business associates and found myself out of a job. I didnt have a kitchen for the first time in years. I wasnt sure what was going to happen or ifnever mind whenmy break would come. My wife and I considered moving to the desert to escape.

It was frustrating, maybe the most frustrating time in my life. Id worked hard over the past decade to open and establish two restaurants that werent mine. First, there was the Whig, a dive bar with an overachieving bar menu in Columbia, South Carolina. When I landed that job, I was just a glorified home cook. I remember having them over to my house and cooking Mexican food late at night, as sort of an audition, and thinking, Please, give me a chance. The food wasnt supposed to be anything serious. It was extra money for a bar business. But I did get that job and the food grew along with my skills as a chef. We must have been doing something right because the Whig was soon one of the most popular dives in town. Its still popular today.

In 2007, one of the partners from the Whig talked me into moving to Asheville. They were planning to open another bar and restaurant and thought the up-and-coming mountain town was a good fit. I wasnt into the idea at first. Opening a restaurant was the hardest work Id ever done, and without exaggerating I can say that opening the Whig had been the worst year of my life. And yet, through the mysterious logic of restaurant life, I let them talk me into it. I travelled to Asheville and found that there was a lot to like about life there.

One of the first restaurants I noticed when I moved to Asheville was 12 Bones Smokehouse. They were different from all the barbecue places I grew up with and knew of in South Carolina. They changed their side dishes all the time, which I thought was just brilliant. So many barbecue places treat sides as the same old stuff. Most either turn out mediocre food, never change the sides, or both. But here was 12 Bones with pimento cheese grits, smoked potato saladreally good food served on the plate as a side. They had staples, sure, but there were new ideas and new sides all the time. I think that may have been what got me started on thinking about barbecue as a restaurant concept that I could make my own.

We ended up calling the new place the Admiral, and the concept was originally the same as the Whig: a dive bar with Whatever Elliott wants to do. I remember early on when it was just me in the kitchen and wed have less than $100 in food sales. Six months later, we were packing the house with $100 tables and people were there for the food. Yet, even while we were figuring out the AdmiralI would say as soon as six months into opening itI was dreaming of opening my own barbecue restaurant. So when one of the owners approached me about opening another restaurant, I immediately started seeing the run-down white gas station across the street with new eyes: it could be my own barbecue joint.

Then, as quick as if you snapped your fingers, five years went by and the dream was still a dream. We worked the Admiral into one of the top restaurants in Asheville, a destination. Maybe it was because they were afraid of losing me, but eventually my potential partner decided to open a restaurant with another local chef. I felt like that was when the dream in its original form died.

Another friend and restauranteur didnt want to see my dream die so easily though. Over late nights, we formed the initial plans for a restaurant on Banks Avenue, down the street from where we are now. We researched the plot of land and found that it used to be called Buxton Hillwe thought that was pretty neat and started calling our dream Buxton Hill Barbecue.

You would think that was that, yet we still needed to lock down the location for Buxton and there was so much planning to do. So my partner invited me to take the helm at his other new restaurant for the meantime. Unfortunately, it was a bad fit. What they wanted was again a dive bar with some food on the side while I wanted to aim higher. Our partnership deteriorated to the point where we decided to part ways completely.

ALL IN THE FAMILY

Buxton came about because of my own history with barbecue, which is something deeply ingrained in my family.

Hubert Moore, my moms dad, actually cooked whole hogs very similar to the way we do it. And boy was he a character: driving around in big, crazy-colored Cadillacs, wearing a seafoam green suit with a Stetson hat, bolo tie, and big diamond rings. Basically, think of J. R. Ewing from the TV show Dallas and you can picture his style. He also raised pigs on his own farm, not really as a business but more to feed the family. I dont have much memory of it, but everyone talks about his mom, my great-grandmother, and how good a cook she was. Her hash is legendary. And shes the one who passed down the knowledge of how to use every part of the pigright up to making head cheese.

Every Saturday he would pick me up in his big Cadillac. We would drive all over back roads together, me and my grandpa. I miss it more and more: those flat expanses of road out there in the backcountry of South Carolina where you just saw corn for miles. Wed go to all sorts of barbecue joints and farms. It was while making rounds with him that I first saw being made on a back porch.

My grandfather on my dads side, R. T. Moss, was not only a good cook; the man knew how to work a fire, for sure. By the time I came around, he was getting on in age, but I heard plenty of stories about folks gathered at his place around a burn barrel and the pit. He would barbecue chickens just about every Friday, and my grandmother would make a big washtub of potato salad. This wasnt just a family affair, either. Back in the day, half the town would stop by for a barbecue plate. The sheriff was there, along with doctors, lawyers, and politicianseveryone would just go hang out, drink some liquor, and eat chicken.

So, as you can see, cooking barbecue and providing a gathering place for the community is definitely something that my dad inherited. He had a welding shop, and hed use it to create large, custom barbecue grills. He eventually took over the weekly cookout tradition from my grandpa, cooking twenty chickens or more most Fridays. He even had a grand vision of opening a barbecue place. Looking back, I wish he would have done it. He actually got to the point where he thought about doing it on the side, running it out of our house and calling it Rib-a-Chick (for ribs and chicken, his specialties). But of course there are health codes and other considerations for actually running any food business, and so eventually he let that dream go.