BY DAN HILDEBRAN
The Clay County man who just opened Starke’s newest barbecue restaurant says he wants to put Florida barbecue on the map.
Gary Park founded G’s Barbecue in 2006. He opened his Bradford County location last month in Starke’s former Pizza Hut and hosted a Chamber of Commerce ribbon-cutting on September 30.
“When you think of Florida,” Park said, “you don’t think of barbecue. When you think of barbecue, you think of Texas, the Carolinas, Kansas City, and Memphis. So, my niche is that I’m putting Florida barbecue on the map. That’s something that I strive for, to really bring a name to Florida when you mention barbecue.”
Barbecue is very subjective
Park does not have a definition for Florida Barbecue. He said he uses the term for the combination of recipes and processes he has developed over the years, beginning with a roadside grill in the Middleburg-Lake Asbury area, competing in cookoffs throughout the country, and progressing through four restaurants before opening the Starke location.
“Barbecue is very subjective,” he said. “Depending on where you are, everything’s a little different. If you go to one part of North Carolina, it’s vinegar sauce; the other side might be a tomato-based sauce, where they’re doing whole hogs and the other side’s doing shoulders.”
Park said Texas-style barbecue had a significant influence on his cooking.
“I’ve taken everything I’ve learned and made it my own style, which I call Florida-style barbecue,” he said. “I think it’s really a conglomeration of just a mixture. I think I do my pork ribs a lot different than most others around. So, I think that kind of sets me apart.”
The G’s founder added that his incorporation of rubs and insistence on fresh, quality ingredients also distinguish his offerings.
Started at a small gas station
Park said he got his start in barbecue when a fellow Baldwin High School graduate opened an eatery in South Carolina.
“And me going up there,” he recalled, “visiting there certain times of the year, I just think it just kind of sparked the interest.”
Park started cooking and serving his brand of barbecue at a small gas station on Saturdays at the corner of Henley Road and County Road 220 around 2006.
Six years later, he opened his first restaurant about a quarter of a mile from the gas station in the Lake Asbury area. Next came restaurants in Green Cove Springs and his hometown of Baldwin.
“We closed those two down,” he recalled. “The last one I opened in 2018 was in Orange Park off Blanding Boulevard. That one unfortunately caught fire in January of this year and put me out of business at that time.”
Park said that after working through insurance claims, he was ready to begin again and had just partnered with home builder Joe Wiggins.
“And the very next day… he calls me up and says, Hey, you want to go look at a building?” Park remembered. “And I’m like, sure. I’m thinking Clay County, Orange Park. And he said it’s the old Pizza Hut in Starke. I’m like, What? Starke? In Bradford?”
Breakfast not like Grannies
The restaurateur said that despite his hesitation, he, Wiggins, and a few others looked over the old Pizza Hut and liked what they saw.
Park said the partnership also purchased a four-acre parcel on U.S. 17 north of Green Cove Springs and plans to build a three-story G’s Barbecue there. He added that his group hopes to include an outdoor pavilion, conference and meeting rooms, and a speakeasy-type lounge in the 19,000-square-foot restaurant.
The G’s founder said he is doing something at the Starke location he has never done in his 12 years of running restaurants: serve breakfast.
“We hired some consultants, and their advice was that we needed to start breakfast,” Park said of the decision. “I wasn’t really for it in the beginning, honestly, but with the county building so close to us, I think they said that probably would go over a well here with all the buildings and the people that are around us.”
Park said the G’s breakfast offerings will differ from anything else offered in Starke.
“We are not doing your standard breakfast like Grannies does, which is kind of a country-cooking breakfast. We’re incorporating the stuff that we already have here, such as brisket and pork and things like that. We are doing bacon, biscuits, and things, but not your standard breakfast.”
