The smell hits you halfway down the block, right around the custom-bra fitter the Rack Shack: fat, smoke, sweet. Bark is dead ahead, a new Dominican-inflected barbecue joint in Bushwick, whose hangar-size space, once home to a paper and plastic wholesaler, makes “joint” all too modest a word. Bark is a barbecue barn with the spirit and spice of a neighborhood hang. Inside, around long communal tables and wedged into a handful of upholstered booths, I watched families with stroller-freed kids and snoozing infants stand alongside beefy dudes in Yankees fitteds and Brunson tees, grandmothers and date nights (or date afternoons), and cops coming in off the beat, all ordering in a mix of English and Spanish, trays groaning with thick slices of brisket and sugar-glossed racks of ribs totted up at the register by a formidable woman in a skull-printed swimsuit. The Bushwick industrial-revival playbook is not new, but Roberta’s, once a pioneer of the gussied-up garage aesthetic, is both one block and a universe away. A friend who’d come with me to feast took in the scene before leaning in to whisper, “Bark is not going for the Bushwick white guy.”
In its first month in business, the restaurant — with the fresh-scrubbed look of a new boutique hotel, modishly appointed with puffy leather chairs and potted palms — has been popular enough to retain the services of a line bouncer, who keeps the cafeteria-style queue moving smoothly, though you can safely expect rubbernecking delays. Bark’s smokers look like monster trucks retrofitted for meat service. They’re visible from some of the windows; there’s plenty to see on the line, as well, where a crew of butchers and choppers do their messy work, their black latex gloves slicked with grease, handing over wax-paper-swaddled sandwiches, a hash of brisket and chopped chicharrones.
Barbecue is an essential summer food, and one that has been in diminishing supply as longtimers like Danny Meyer’s Blue Smoke and Williamsburg’s Fette Sau have closed shop. If Ruben Santana, Bark’s pitmaster, did little more than replenish our stores of brisket and belly, he would have been warmly welcomed. But Bark is barbecue in a New York state of mind. Santana, who was born in Washington Heights and grew up in Queens, learned Texas smoking from the five boroughs, via YouTube. His own innovation is to play the hits in a Dominican key.
Santana had experience in professional kitchens — just not on the line. He did HVAC work, servicing cooling and exhaust systems for restaurants like Del Posto, Morimoto, and the Momofuku group. “I loved the hustle and bustle of a kitchen,” he told me. When work slowed during the pandemic, he started fiddling with grilling in his Ozone Park backyard. “You know how the algorithm works on your phone,” he said. “All of a sudden, I got barbecue restaurant-review videos on my YouTube, and I fell in love.”
Through trial and error, with a Home Depot smoker, he began to figure out the slow, sweaty craft of barbecue. (Though he grew up with excellent home cooking, he said, he never cooked himself: The grandmother who raised him never let him into the kitchen.) After a year, he was good enough to throw a verboten Fourth of July cookout during quarantine. He kept going, clocking out on Fridays and trimming and smoking all night. By 2021, word of mouth got him to Smorgasburg, and he hung up his tool kit for good. From there, a stall in Dumbo’s Time Out Market. Momentum built until he was able to secure the 8,000-square-foot space in Brooklyn.
The restaurant opened in its new space in July. Hugo Yu.
The restaurant opened in its new space in July. Hugo Yu.
This bigger Bark is a leap forward in ambition. I’d feel comfortable recommending it for the new cerdo a la leña alone, a descendant of the whole, live-fire roasted pigs Santana ate during visits to his mother’s family in the D.R., where they’d feed giant gatherings of whoever was around. Most barbecue worth its wood has bark, the blackened crust that forms on the outside of the meat, but Santana’s cerdo goes even further, its skin rendered to a golden-brown, tooth-cracking crunch. “You want the crispy bit?” the counter man asked me, chopping a pile of tender meat, bones, and skin in front of me. I want — you want — the crispy bit.
I have no complaints about Santana’s brisket, the stock in trade of any barbecue artisan, but leaning into the Dominican side of the menu reaps even greater rewards. Santana joins a number of pitmasters incorporating their own flavors into the great American barbecue tradition, and his soffritto, perfumed with garlic, cilantro, and culantro, olives and capers, cebollines and aji gustoso, is the base of both his meats and their accompaniments: the Cuban-style arroz congri (rice and beans) he learned from an uncle and the gooey, oregano-spiked mac and cheese. Pulled pork is pulled pork, but I couldn’t resist the pull of carnitas instead — made here not with pork, but with waste-not brisket trimmings — braised in its own fat, a pile of atherogenic excess, a duck confit for the backyard, served on golden coasters of tostón. Sweet, cola-ish ribs, basted in molasses and honey, are good, but I got an even grislier pleasure from rib tips, those throwaway end pieces, which Santana smokes, candies, and serves to be gnawed at like porky harmonicas.
Success has led to the occasional hiccup. Shortages can be expected — 2,700 orders were rung up on the last Sunday in July, when Dominican Father’s Day is celebrated — and I never managed to try Santana’s brisket-enriched baked beans, or his batata asada, slow-smoked sweet potatoes, which were out on both my visits. (Until they return, caramelized platanos maduros scratch a similar itch.) The backyard — the spiritual home of barbecue — has yet to open. (It should soon.) Cold Presidentes and Monopolios, the Dominican IPA, are available to cut through the smear, even if a nearby church ensures liquor won’t be forthcoming. You could complain about these minor snags or relax and join the party. It’s happening either way.
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