Mackensy Lunsford

mlunsford@citizen-times.com

A new all-wood barbecue restaurant is coming to Candler. Doc Brown's BBQ, the brick-and-mortar version of a local food truck, will serve as a table around which a swiftly changing city can gather.

The restaurant, which will open in late summer at 1320 Smokey Park Highway, the former location of Cruizers Diner, will serve a classic, Southern barbecue menu that refuses to hew to any one barbecue region.

"It's going to be eclectic; it's the 'new cue,'" said "Doc" David Brown, who will open the restaurant with his wife Krista.

Smoked chicken salad will be made with Alabama white sauce. Ribs will be cut St. Louis-style, but rubbed Memphis-style. Brown will use both his food truck-mounted wood pellet smoker and a newer, more tricked-out model, to smoke chickens, house-made sausages, brisket and pork shoulders.

"We're proud that we're part of the barbecue establishment of Buncombe County that's been using nothing but wood to cook the food," Brown said. .

Brown's pellet smoker uses electricity to run an auger which feeds the pellets into the smoker. Other than that, the only fuel running the machine is fire, he said.

"It doesn't give it the same character as the coals, but it's different from the gas and electric smokers because it perfumes instead of permeates the meat," he said.

Brown holds a doctorate in American history from the University of South Carolina and holds court as an affable historian from behind the window of his truck. He also emcees trivia games in local bars.

An erstwhile bartender, Brown became smitten with the energy of the restaurant industry. The food truck has enabled him to combine his love for food and the type of bar-side philosophizing he enjoys.

"I'm hanging out the window and instead of Bud Lights, I've got sandwiches," he said. "I just babble at you through the window."

As Brown babbles about barbecue, he traces an invisible map of 'cue country in the air.

"You've got Kentucky with the mutton and the burgoo," he said, stabbing vaguely west. "Texas, over here, and then you and then you add the impact of cultural traditions brought by slaves from Africa. You see the way the foodways start banging into each other and creating this quintessentially American thing. I get off on that."

The pig-picker loves to pick his customers' brains in a way that inspires him to quote French epicure Jean Anthelme Brillat-Savarin: "Tell me what you eat and I will tell you what you are."

In a culture where few people think about the provenance of their food, let alone its history, Brown takes pleasure in watching the lights come on as he talks about the origin of everything he serves, from pulled pork to macaroni pie.

The latter is a baked slab of macaroni and cheese, a Low Country staple that traveled across the Atlantic with slave labor by way of Barbados and Bermuda, Brown explained.

He's fascinated by such foodways, and will happily tell you as much as you'd like to know about the ways in which immigration impacts coleslaw. "People get as tribal about their slaw as they do their barbecue," he said.

To pay homage to the various tribes, the restaurant will serve slaw flights.

Brown is also intrigued by the imaginary borders within his own city. Where swiftly changing West Asheville bumps up against more conservative Candler, where families have lived for generations, Brown sees an uneasy dynamic.

"I don't see friction, but I don't see people getting together," he said.

But people will always gather around food, which is why Brown will build a communal table and a big barbecue pit where he'll "cook with a shovel" once a month on Sunday. All money made will go to a local beneficiary. Even better, people will gather, eat and get to know each other.

"We'll pay for the food, and everybody eats and sits together," he said. "Everyone starts finding out who each other is."

Dining review: Doc Brown's BBQ