SEBASTAPOOL, Calif. (KGO) — If you want to try the hottest new BBQ spot in Sebastopol, you need to line up early.
A&M BBQ is bringing southern food and flavor to the North Bay.
These two men never thought they’d even have a restaurant, let alone one together.
Now they’re serving up southern food and flavor in Sebastopol to big crowds and long lines.
It’s easy to tell Kris Austin and Marvin McKenzy love cooking good BBQ.
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What may be a harder to figure out, is how two men from the south ended doing it together in this small Northern California town.
Their restaurant draws big crowds every weekend.
“We don’t know what to expect when those doors open. So, it’s just like, you step out on faith, you put everything in there, and you wait to see the reaction, to see what happened,” Austin said. “But every weekend, 15 minutes here, that line starts to work its way down the corner. So we’re thankful. We’re super thankful.”
This is A&M BBQ in Sebastapol, California, owned by Kris Austin, the “A,” and Marvin Mckenzy, the “M.”
“So A&M BBQ is a Texas style BBQ restaurant, and we serve pretty much everything that you’ll find out the Texas menu,” Austin said. “From brisket to spare ribs to tri tip, which is in California — California brisket, I should say. And then we do pork. We do oxtail. We do pretty much everything. We like to keep it really fun, and we gotta keep it interesting around here.”
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From the ribs that need no sauce to the cornbread made with honey and fresh corn, A&M is the reflection of Austin’s and McKenzy’s southern roots.
Austin grew up in Mississippi, and McKenzy in Kentucky.
“Kentucky was my life, and that’s all we did at family get-togethers. That’s what it was. All about cooking, cooking, yeah,” McKenzy said.
When McKenzy moved to California, he started cooking at a local restaurant, never thinking he’d have his own.
“I took food there and people were like, ‘When you’re gonna open a restaurant?’ It’s not a smart thing for me to do, so I never took it seriously. And then my daughter pushed me to take it seriously,” he said.
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Austin briefly sold BBQ from a food truck. McKenzy opened a store. Each always admiring the other’s food. They became friends, then business partners, coming together to open A&M BBQ.
“We didn’t start it like normal people do. We didn’t start it with $3-400,000. You want to know the honest truth? We started this business with $25,000, and we’ve been scratching and working our butts off every single week since then,” Austin said.
Lines outside the restaurant start forming well before A&M opens. Once it does, the food often is gone in hours.
“No matter what we cook, can’t beat the clock. So, like, our hours say 11 to six, but really it’s until we sell out of food. So we have not made it to six o’clock since we started. And we’ve tried. We’ve doubled, we’ve tripled, and no matter how much we make, it goes,” Austin said.
KUMASI AARON: “What are you proudest of?”
MARVIN MCKENZY: “That we found each other.”
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