JANESVILLE — Backyard Barbecue is not Lester Grace’s first go-around at owning a restaurant in Janesville. Ten years ago, he and his family ran a barbecue restaurant out of a strip mall on the city’s southside.
Talking about Backyard Barbecue, that opened in December at 2517 Milton Ave., across from the Uptown Janesville mall, Grace characterizes its menu as “love baked into every bite.”
Grace was born in Texas, grew up in Beloit and has lived most of his adult life in Janesville. He calls the former restaurant on the southside, that struggled to build a customer base and ended up closing, a humbling learning experience.
Now, “I’m achieving my goals,” he said, adding that, “I’m not there yet.”
Grace’s latest chapter got underway the winter after the southside restaurant closed, when he was asked to cook for a 350-person wedding after another caterer backed out.
He already had the necessary equipment and was able to do it. Moving forward, catering out of his home became a stable way of making money doing the two things he loves — preparing barbecuing and serving others.
Later, he purchased a food truck to serve barbecue at outdoor events. The success of that endeavor allowed him to purchase the restaurant on Milton Avenue.
In fact, he’d gotten so busy that he needed the full kitchen space a restaurant provides, to be able to fulfill orders.
Grace, who began working in the restaurant industry as a teenager, says he always knew he would someday own his own business. His mom was a scratch cook — so much so that he didn’t realize canned spaghetti sauce was a thing until he was about 20 years old.
“When you cook from scratch, it’s slow and easy. That’s exactly what barbecue is, it’s slow and easy,” he said. “You can over complicate it and mess it all up. It’s simple; it just takes time and you have to be patient.”
Before he opened the southside restaurant, he participated in barbecue competitions throughout Wisconsin. He said he really enjoyed that and someday would like to do it again.
He said owning a catering business and now the new restaurant have proven blessings because of the customers.
“It’s the customers I’ve been serving for 10 years and they’re still coming back,” he said. “It makes me feel good. Having that support from customers has validated me and let me know that I am doing something right.”
Thinking back to before he started the first restaurant on the southside, he recalls that he “kept thinking over the years how to find my niche. I knew that there was only other (local) restaurant who was doing just barbecue and I’ve been doing it ever since.”
“The brisket is what led me into the business,” he said, noting that it remains one of his most popular menu items, but that rib tips have been gaining in popularity.
He said he never could find brisket that tasted like he recalls having as a child in Texas and decided that he would just start making it himself.
In Texas, “we’d have barbecues and there’s always this beef and we never knew as a kid what it was called,” he recalls.
Grace, two nephews, his mom and a family friend now help run the restaurant and he said they expect to hire more help at some point.
He spends a typical weekday babysitting meat and preparing for events.
Smoking brisket is an art that requires an understanding of temperature, wood type, smoke and time. All account for the depth of flavor brought out in the meat. It takes about eight hours to smoke one brisket
The meat is typically served with mac and cheese, green beans and other sides, but they work with catering customers to fulfill special requests that aren’t listed on the menu.
Backyard Barbecue is open on Fridays and Saturdays from 11 a.m. to 6 p.m. The men is on Backyard Barbecue’s Facebook page.
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