Gavin, Jamie and Chris Farella spent summers in North Carolina eating barbecue. About 15 years ago, they decided to bring those recipes up north.
Barbecue for breakfast offered in Point Pleasant Beach
Barbecue for breakfast? Yes, please! Find it at Jersey Shore BBQ in Point Pleasant Beach, which serves breakfast four days a week.
- Brothers Smokehouse has three locations, including one in Ramsey.
- The Brothers menu includes family recipes like fried chicken, collard greens, cornbread and more.
- Brothers makes North Carolina barbecue dishes like chopped BBQ, but also brisket, ribs, sausage and more.
Brothers Gavin, Jamie and Chris Farella grew up taking trips every summer to see family in the southern Outer Banks of North Carolina. There, they’d eat whatever fish was fresh, some family favorites like fried shrimp and chicken, their mom’s collard greens… and barbecue, a lot of it.
They ate well, but then they’d come back to Mountainville, in New York’s Hudson Valley, and long for those simple culinary pleasures.
“Me and my brothers got together in 2008 and started cooking together over the summer, and we were like, ‘We can do this; we can share our family’s food,’” Chris Farella said. “It was our interpretation of what we were always seeing, what we were always tasting.”
What’s grown out of that desire to bring their family’s food up north is three restaurants — Brothers Smokehouse in Ramsey and two others in New York — one in New Windsor and the other in the Palisades Center in West Nyack — which serve a menu of barbecue staples like ribs, brisket, chopped BBQ, pulled pork and more, plus sides pulled directly from the family cookbook.
Indeed, there’s more than just food on the menu at Brothers; there’s a family’s history.
Culinary roots in North Carolina
The Farellas descend from the Davis Family in Beaufort, North Carolina. The Davises were formerly enslaved free people working as fishermen, whalers and boat builders around the turn of the 20th century. They occupied their own island nearby, Davis Ridge, on which they were self-sufficient, catching and growing their own food and developing a culture unto themselves.
No one’s lived on the island for almost a century, but the family, including the Farellas, has spread out into the larger south Outer Banks region. The culinary traditions there have endured into future generations of the Davis family, and they serve as the bedrock on which the Farellas have built their barbecue business.
“Barbecue was something that when we would go to North Carolina and it was such a big part of our summer,” Chris Farella said. “Everyday it was, ‘What are we eating today? Seafood, fish, shrimp…’ and the next day we’re eating barbecue, or we’re eating it mixed in with other foods.”
Too, Farella said his mother, Cheryll, was a massive influence on the boys. She was a great cook, Farella said, and would often volunteer her time to cook at school or throw romping get-togethers at their house. Her sons were included in the cooking process there, and on trips to North Carolina: “Cooking in general was always part of our life,” Farella said.
You’ll see Cheryll’s influence on the menu at Brothers in dishes like the collard greens, cornbread, candied yams and shrimp and grits.
“I eat [those items] and it’s like I can close my eyes and see her cooking it,” Farella said. “Our cornbread is something my mom used to make with every single meal and that’s something, people … always mention.”
The Farellas also pull recipes from their extended family, as in Aunt Caroline’s fried shrimp and Aunt Edna’s fried chicken — one of my favorites at the Ramsey spot, so crispy on the outside, so moist and piping hot on the inside.
Farella said the recipe matters in delivering good food, of course, but the care with which his family prepared food is also something he hopes has been passed through to the dishes at Brothers.
“Aunt Edna played a big part of our story growing up,” Farella said. “She always fried chicken and lived with us. People loved my aunt’s fried chicken, and we would ask her, ‘Why does everyone love your chicken?’ and she said, ‘I put a lot of love and attention to it.’ She had her basic simple recipe, but it was the love and attention to it.”
Barbecue from North Carolina and beyond
Probably my favorite dish at Brothers Smokehouse is their chopped BBQ, a North Carolina specialty made of slow-roasted pork, chopped into tiny morsels and smothered in a vinegar, red pepper and brown sugar sauce.
“It’s not like the traditional thick barbecue sauce you would apply,” Farella said. “It’s lightly dressed on the pork, so it cuts through the fatiness of the park, so you have this umami acidic flavor.”
To expand their menu, the brothers took a barbecue sojourn throughout the South to find out what great brisket and ribs taste like. The brisket is uber-tender and its peppery bark is so fresh.
“When we first got serious about barbecue, we went to Memphis, we went to Austin, we went to Oklahoma City, and when we were in Austin, we fell in love with brisket and we got inspired by the places there,” Farella said. “It’s something we smoke everyday and it’s literally three ingredients: brisket, salt and black pepper.”
Ribs come in two varieties, babyback and St. Louis-style — the latter falls off the bone and its sweet-spicy glaze is spot-on. You can also get 12-hour-brined and smoked chicken, Texas sausage, a rotating fish of the day, burgers and more.
Growing barbecue in New Jersey
It’s said that New Jersey doesn’t have great barbecue; a growing list of smokers like the Farellas would beg to differ. Ultimately, though, Chris Farella said whether it stacks up to the barbecue he grew up eating or has eaten on trips down South is immaterial; if people like it here, that’s good enough for the brothers.
“I’m here to make people want to eat. If the people are eating it, I’m happy,” he said. “People are always gonna congregating around food and it’s inviting in new cultures and to me that’s the most important.”
Barbecue has been an intimate part of the Farellas’ life for almost as far as the family tree goes back in the U.S. The brothers value getting to tell that story and while Farella said he doesn’t judge folks who make barbecue in newer, modern ways, there is virtue in using time-tested family techniques and recipes.
“If somebody can cook, they can cook, but there are certain nuances, right?” he said. “If people are new to cuisine when they try it, they’re gonna be like, ‘Oh wow, this is nice,’ and they might try to culturally appropriate it and put their spin on it. They’re gonna miss it. There’s a reason why things are done a certain way and it takes a while to understand that.”
While you can get great, traditional North Carolina barbecue — and a handful of other barbecue dishes from other regions — at Brothers, Farella said what he hopes diners take away most from eating at the smokehouse is the love, attention and history in its dishes.
“People will ask us, ‘What’s your style of barbecue?’” Farella said, “But we’re really trying to tell our story and you can see it in the food we serve.”
Matt Cortina is a food reporter for NorthJersey.com/The Record. Reach him at mcortina@gannett.com.
