Popular Redwood Smoke Shack is bringing its Texas-style barbecue to Virginia Beach

Some of the region’s best ribs and brisket are coming to Virginia Beach.

Since it opened four years ago as a food truck, Texas-inspired Redwood Smoke Shack has been a bastion for some of Hampton Roads’ finest and most inventive barbecue. Their Norfolk restaurant, which opened in 2019, is now home to a cornucopia of smoked meats that might include thick-barked Texas brisket, house-made sausage, turkey, chicken, pulled pork, pork belly, pastrami, beef ribs or Texas-style dry-rub ribs. We named the ribs the best of their kind in town.

But with the barbecue spot open in Norfolk, the food truck doesn’t get around quite as much. And so owner-pitmaster Bob Roberts said he kept getting questions from customers who’d driven miles for that brisket: When are you coming to Virginia Beach?

The answer, as it turns out, is sometime this spring — maybe as soon as May 1. Redwood Smoke Shack is slated to open a satellite location near the Virginia Beach municipal complex, at 2476 Nimmo Parkway across from the courthouse: Pay a parking ticket, reward yourself with smoked pork.

A mock-up of the forthcoming Redwood Virginia Beach location, projected for May 2021 at 2476 Nimmo Parkway (Courtesy Jon Carolino/Carolino Creative)

One of the main things Redwood had to figure out is: How do you expand your barbecue spot without sacrificing the quality of the cook?

“I never thought Redwood would be more than one location,” Roberts said. “We hold ourselves to a very high standard, and not only with our cooking on the pits. Everything has recipes, a way it’s got to be done, and I can’t be in two locations.”

It’s taken a long time, he said, alongside manager and co-pitmaster Floyd Thomas, to get their systems down. They didn’t want to worry about doing two separate smokes and trying to keep the meat the same.

And so they won’t. Redwood’s big overnight brisket cook, from 4 p.m. the day before until the next morning, will still happen on the big “Bubba” smoker in Norfolk. A second Norfolk smoker will handle the shorter cooks. And Thomas will still be working the same four or five-day process to make the house sausage at the flagship location.

The meats will then ride down to the satellite Virginia Beach location each day, the same way it would happen with the food truck. Jeremy Regula, assistant manager in Norfolk, will step in to manage the new location.

“The meat for the Norfolk location will go in the warmers here, and Virginia Beach’s will go into the warmers in the meat wagon. It’s business as usual,” Roberts said. “Really, it’s like having the food truck every day at the same location. That’s my concept.”

And so the 1,300 square foot space — devoted mostly to spaced-out indoor seating, with patio seats also planned — will also be mocked up as the front of a food truck, complete with an ordering window and a wheel.

“I wanted to do that in Ghent, but the space didn’t allow me to,” he said. “The setup here is ideal, with a long area to wait in line.”

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Virginia Beach will also have a smoker, however. “Daisy,” the original 500-gallon smoker Redwood used as a food truck, will roll down to Virginia Beach. That’ll cook up some specials, such as smoked burgers on Wednesdays. It may also serve as a pilot smoker for new ideas.

“You can see the smoker, you can smell it going every day,” Roberts said. “We do some off the wall stuff. If we’ve got it going, why not play around? It might be the test kitchen — our other pits are jamming.”

The Virginia Beach spot will bring a lot of the same Redwood aesthetic from Norfolk to the Virginia Beach space, with reclaimed tin and the same sign — but there’ll also be some real cowhide on the seats.

For safety, they’ll also be installing a ventilation system with ultraviolet-light irradiation help kill coronavirus or other germs.

The space is still under construction, but Roberts said he expects finding the right employees to be the most important variable on whether he’ll be able to meet his projected opening date in May.

“I’m not going to rush anything,” he said. “We can get them through the door, but if they have a bad experience, that’ll leave a bad taste in your mouth. I don’t have the luxury for anyone to have a bad experience.”

Matthew Korfhage, 757-446-2318, matthew.korfhage@pilotonline.com