Rosemary McCoy

SiouxFalls

Downtown Sioux Falls gains a barbecue restaurant Wednesday.

Brookings-based Backyard Grill is opening its second location in Sioux Falls, serving pulled pork, brisket, smoked chicken, ribs and other dishes.

“Barbecue is the hot thing right now,” owner Alan Elenkiwich said, noting that restaurants such as Perkins and Arby’s are trying to capitalize on the “smokehouse” trend. “We just do solely Southern food.”

Elenkiwich leased the former Chedd’s Gourmet Grill Cheese space at 323 S. Phillips Ave. in December and has been renovating slowly.

“We didn’t push just to get it open,” he said. The interior is cozy with exposed brick, rustic wood and a tin ceiling.

Elenkiwich built a 20-tap beer system that’s housed in the shell of a smoker. Backyard Grill will serve beer as soon as the license has final approval from the state.

The food will be prepared at the larger Western Avenue location, which houses the smoker. The cooks use hickory, cherry and apple wood to smoke the meats for up to 12 hours. Eighty percent of the menu will be the same as that restaurant, Elenkiwich said.

The downtown site will have a few new appetizers such as fried pickles and fried okra. It won’t serve SDSU ice cream like the other locations.

Unlike the other two sites, the new restaurant will offer table service.

Once the restaurant is running smoothly, Elenkiwich said he’ll start looking for a site on the east side of Sioux Falls.

He started his restaurant company 11 years ago with catering and grew to preparing 1,000 plates a week.

“It started as a summer job for our kids when they came home from college,” Elenkiwich said. “We operated between Memorial Day and Labor Day.”

The Brookings restaurant stemmed from that, and he expanded to Sioux Falls in 2014. In addition to catering, Backyard Grill has a food truck in Sioux Falls that heads out to events or by request to businesses at lunch time.

Hours for the downtown location are 10:30 a.m. to midnight Monday through Saturday and until 10 p.m. Sunday.