Tropical BBQ Market, chef Rick Mace’s ‘Florida barbecue’ spinoff, opening in West Palm Beach

Jun 12, 2023

It’s research-and-development week for the new Tropical BBQ Market in West Palm Beach, and chef Rick Mace and business partner Jason Lakow have been sampling a future menu item: Trinidadian doubles.

Doubles are a fried flatbread street food stuffed with curried chickpeas and dressed in tamarind and coriander sauces, mango chutney, cucumber and kuchela (a spicy green relish).

Ahead of their fast-casual pit stop’s debut on Friday, Aug. 18, Mace and Lakow have been obsessed with them. If either forgets to pick up doubles from a nearby restaurant on Lake Worth Road, it can lead to passionate (and yes, hangry) screaming matches.

“The truth is we’re both addicted to them, OK?” Lakow says with a laugh during a recent restaurant tour.

“I swear we’re like a married couple,” Mace adds.

The pair believe doubles fit perfectly at Tropical BBQ Market, which will serve what Mace, a 2023 James Beard Award semifinalist (ex-Palm Beach’s Café Boulud), dubs “Florida-style barbecue”: smoked meats plus grab-and-go items inspired by the flavors of Cuba and the rest of the Caribbean.

The eatery at 206 S. Olive Ave. in downtown West Palm Beach is a sequel to Tropical Smokehouse, the acclaimed restaurant they opened in 2021 on South Dixie Highway. (In March, their Smokehouse flagship earned Southern Living Magazine’s lofty distinction of “best locally owned restaurant in Florida.”)

Measuring 1,900 square feet, Tropical BBQ Market is part retail shop and part lunch-dinner counter, firing up their original’s greatest hits by-the-pound and in sandwich form: mojo pulled pork, jerk turkey breast, brisket, pork spare ribs and barbecue jackfruit.

The centerpiece is its offset rotisserie smoker from Texas–based M&M Barbecue Co., built to handle up to 60 briskets and fire meats low and slow with charcoal, oak and hickory, Mace says. He wants Tropical BBQ to transform the hidebound idea that Florida lacks a barbecue heritage, that the state only borrows from big barbecue towns like Austin, Memphis, Charleston and Kansas City.

He argues that true Florida barbecue is rooted in the region’s rich fusion of Latin and Caribbean flavors, as well as the Sunshine State’s tradition of smoked fish.

“Florida deserves more credit for barbecue,” Mace says. “If you were in the Carolinas, you’d get whole hog. In Texas, obviously it’s brisket. Here, Florida doesn’t have the same sway. I’m here to smoke meats and merge things that are special to this multicultural place, and the market is an expansion on that idea.”

Sit down for a Tropical BBQ Market meal and the influences are obvious. The South Dakota-sourced brisket ($16 plate with two sides, $34 per pound), ringed in crispy bark, is brushed with a Cuban espresso sauce. Pulled pork ($13 plate, $20 per pound) is accented with a telltale mojo marinade of garlic, lime and orange. Sides are no less Floridian: Along with sweet, sticky plantains ($8), there’s smoked wahoo filet fish dip ($8 small, $14 large), an idea Mace adapted from St. Petersburg icon Ted Peters Famous Smoked Fish.

The menu also includes smoked curry heritage chicken plated with choice of rice, roti, Caribbean coleslaw or plantains ($15-$21); and two sandwiches: The #13 (pork, chorizo and avocado, $9-$16) and The #17 (brisket, peppers and chimichurri, $10-$17).

It all comes together in Mace’s simplified kitchen, which includes a prep counter, walk-in refrigerator and smoker but, unlike at Tropical Smokehouse, no griddle, oven or deep-fryer, Lakow says.

“This space is a fraction of the size of the smokehouse, so it’s exclusively barbecue,” he says of the market, which occupies the ground floor of a century-old building on the corner of South Olive Avenue and Datura Street. “It’s a serving line with a grab-and-go counter, but it’s also a place to grab ingredients so customers can prepare dishes at home.”

The front-of-house is stocked with 17 tables, 40 seats and custom wood shelving, all hand-built by Mace at his home workshop, to display barbecue-inspired retail items such as brisket beef tallow soap, corn grits and cornbread flour, South Carolina rice, bottled sauces and sea island red peas. Meanwhile, refrigerated cases will be stocked with premade breakfast handhelds and grab-and-go lunches, such as empanadas, chorizo, egg and cheese roti ($9, $7 without chorizo), strawberry-guava bread pudding ($5), Key lime pie ($5) and brisket, eggs and cheese ($12). (Yes, Trinidadian doubles will be added here over the next several weeks.)

The grab-and-go section will constantly evolve, Lakow adds, calibrated to customer feedback. They learned that lesson the hard way two years ago when Mace argued that Tropical Smokehouse’s opening menu should nix brisket because it didn’t “represent Florida barbecue.”

“That was until customers told us that no self-respecting barbecue place ignores brisket,” Mace says. “And they were right. It’s our most popular item at the Smokehouse. We have to listen and not be so aloof.”

Juice, a 600-square-foot, speakeasy-style bar serving cocktails inspired by Florida-grown fruits, will open next door in the evenings, once Tropical BBQ Market closes, and will also be operated by Lakow and Mace. The bar’s cocktail menu is still being finalized and is expected to debut in September.

“In terms of the ambiance, it’s going to be a bar equally as serious as our food, as serious as what we’re doing at Tropical Smokehouse,” Mace says.

Tropical BBQ Market, at 206 S. Olive Ave., will open to the public on Friday, Aug. 18. Visit EatTropical.com or call 561-800-2124.