Starting Friday, your glass of Old Dominick Distillery bourbon may come with a side of barbecue.
That’s Bain BBQ, to be specific, as Old Dominick announced that it would introduce a food offering from the Cooper-Young restaurant beginning October 27th at its Downtown distillery at 305 South Front Street.
“Our partnership with Bain BBQ creates a delightful food offering for our guests,” Ben Brown, director of guest experiences at Old Dominick Distillery, said in a statement. “Starting October 27th, you can savor the best of both worlds, with their culinary offerings paired with our premium spirits.”
The Distillery had been without a food component since Andrew Ticer and Michael Hudman’s Gray Canary, which opened in 2018 inside the Old Dominick building, closed in January this year.
Bain BBQ’s menu at Old Dominick will include a range of sandwiches, including turkey breast, pulled pork, and brisket, and available sides like coleslaw or chips. And save some room for the Texas Twinkies (basically poppers), a combo of bacon, jalapeños, and cream cheese.
Bain Barbecue & Bakery to open in February in old Stone Soup location in Cooper-Young. (Credit: Heather Bain)
When Ryan Glosson heard the Bain BBQ food truck was going out of business last October, he stopped by and tried some of Bryant Bain’s barbecue.
Glosson thought, “This is too good to not exist. How can we make this work?”
So, Glosson and Bain joined forces. They plan to open Bain Barbecue & Bakery in late February in the old Stone Soup Cafe & Market building they recently purchased at 993 Cooper Street in Cooper-Young.
Bain posted on social media that he had to close his food truck, which specialized in Texas craft-style brisket. “We just ran out of money to keep it afloat,” he says. “And we were at a point where we weren’t profitable yet.”
Several people had talked to Bain about partnering with him on some sort of business, but when Glosson talked to him, they just clicked.
The bakery part of the business will open first. “There’s a place in my hometown, Hillje, Texas, [called] Prasek’s [Family Smokehouse],” Bain says. “They make homemade sausage and kolaches.”
A kolache, he says, is “this dough. And you punch a hole in the bottom to make a tiny little bread bowl; essentially, and you fill it with cream cheese and jam.”
Kolaches will be served at Bain Barbecue & Bakery (Credit: Heather Bain)
Bain yearned for Prasek’s. “I wanted their food. I decided to do the next best thing and make it for myself.”
He thought, “I should do a bakery.”
Ironically, Glosson, who had lived in Austin and San Francisco, was already thinking about opening a similar business in Memphis. When Bain shared his ideas, Glosson said, “Holy shit. We have to do this. It’s fate.”
Bain also will make “klobasneks,” which are savory kolaches. “We’ll have sausage cheese, sausage, cheese and jalapeño; ham, cheese, and jalapeño,” he says.”And I just told Ryan about this, Heather, [Bain’s wife] also is working on a stuffed biscuit recipe that will have egg, cheese, and bacon; and sausage, cheese, and bacon inside of a biscuit and you can take it and run.”
That will be on the breakfast bakery side, Bain says. “Then all manner of cookies and cinnamon rolls. I’ve been working on a ton of different recipes — a bunch of stuffed cookies like salted caramel stuffed chocolate chip cookies, brownie stuffed chocolate chip cookies, Nutella stuffed sugar cookies.”
Brownie-stuffed cookies will be sold at Bain Barbecue & Bakery (Credit: Heather Bain)
“And they are freaking fabulous,” Glosson says.
The bakery will start serving “in the early hours,” he says. They will deliver as well as take orders at a counter. “Your order comes out and there’ll be tables in an area where you can sit.”
The barbecue portion of the restaurant will come later because the new pit won’t be delivered until March. They need to build an external outdoor structure that will enclose the pit — a 1,000 gallon smoker. “We’re working with architects right now on the drawings themselves,” Glosson says. “Barbecue will come in the summer. Hopefully, late summer.”
They will have his famous brisket as well as Memphis-style barbecue including pulled pork, Bain says. “We’re switching to house-made sausage. I’ll be making all the sausage in house.”
Bryant Bain’s brisket will be sold at Bain Barbecue & Bakery (Credit: Heather Bain)
In addition to seating customers in the two front dining rooms, Glosson says, “We want the building to be able to double as an event space for corporate events. We’ve got several friends in town who say there’s a need for an event space in Cooper-Young that can do events for between 50 and 100 people.”
They’ve already come up with the bathroom themes. “We’re going to have one pig-themed bathroom and one cow-themed bathroom,” Glosson says. “They’re going to be very, very cute.”
The interior will be done in “multiple colors,” Glosson says. “We’re going to have blue in the foyer, a cream color in the dining room, a red in the adjoining room in the front. We’re going to have the cream with some red in there and some exposed brick.”
They’re working with Jason Lowe on the interior design, Glosson says.
The two-story building is about 4,000 square feet, he says. They will be using only the first floor for now, but the restaurateurs hope to start using the upstairs space as more dining rooms once the barbecue gets going.
Then there’s “the line,” Glosson says. “One of the things that’s really cool about these barbecue restaurants in Texas is ‘the line.’ When the brisket comes up and they start to cut it, serve it, in Austin people start lining up at 7, 8 a.m. They’ll bring a cooler and lawn chairs. When it’s gone, it’s gone. They want to make sure they get some.”
