He has been in a moving, or expanding, mood for the last couple of years. After scouting a number of nearby sites, “I never found any place I really liked — until this one,” Mr. Rodrigues said.
Are You from Schenectady?
Early one recent morning, the sun’s rays muted by the new awnings, the business-minded Mr. Rodrigues was positioned in the gun seat of a booth, trusty cellphone encased in his beefy palm. Often mistaken for the non-existent Mr. Rodriguez, who is of Mexican ancestry, Mr. Rodrigues’ ancestors were Portuguese, although the more recent ones — unsurprisingly — were from Santa Maria. Fortunately for Culver City diners, the Rodrigues family did not settle in upstate New York because, somebody said, Schenectady Barbecue just doesn’t have the right rhythm.
Call It ‘Fast-Casual’
For the past six years, Mr. Rodrigues has operated the original Santa Maria Barbecue, a fast-service, largely takeout store featuring its top-selling tri-tip specialty.
The new location — on the site where Thai Thai Barbecue operated for the last decade — will offer several major differences. “Beer and wine will be served here, which I can’t do over there (at the old store) because it’s too small. There will be much more indoor seating (accommodating forty persons) and limited outdoor seating (facing Irving Place and facing Culver). There will be the same sort of what is called fast-casual. The customer comes in and pays for his food up front, finds a seat, gets his own beverage, and we bring out the alcohol. There are sort of pseudo-waitresses who will ask if you want another beer.”
The Right Side of the Street
Regardless of the direction from which you approach the new Santa Maria Barbecue, Mr. Rodrigues says that he is on the right side of the street now, the south side of Culver Boulevard. “The difference is night and day,” he says. “I am getting pinched out of (the old store), sort of,” he says. “The building next door, where I put thirty of my outdoor seats, is being sold. I hear it’s going to be demolished and rebuilt. It’s three feet away from my building, and it’s going to eliminate thirty seats. In a way, I am sort of planning for the future. I have always wanted a bigger place. Between this side of the street and the side where Starbucks is, it’s night and day with foot traffic. There could possibly be no human being who walks by my place between 3 and 6 in the afternoon. I am serious. Dead. Really, I should close for three hours. But I don’t like the idea of closing, not when you’re burning an open pit with a fire.”
Faced with a Dining Dilemma
Even though the original Santa Maria Barbecue would seem ideally positioned in the heart of the action, and on City Hall’s doorstep, a segment of meal-time traffic frustratingly tends to look elsewhere. “Over here,” said Mr. Rodrigues, taking on a momentary glow, “there is constant foot traffic. I don’t get any of the new movie theatre customers where I am now. They don’t come down this way. They venture to the corner (Irving/Culver), and they kind of see Starbucks. They’re not sure. And they end up getting chicken. Or they go to Howdy’s. Or they go to Daphne’s. It’s the only game in town. They don’t want to leave the block. I don’t get any of the live theatre, the Kirk Douglas people, because they want a glass of wine. They want a waiter to come up and serve them.”
Making His Store a Destination
How can the new Barbecue location lure these meandering crowds? “Two ways,” Mr. Rodrigues said. “One is going to be word of mouth because I have a huge lunch following. On Friday and Saturday nights, waves of people, just waves, come across the street, the corner will be better lit, and I will do some advertising.” Hours at the original store are 11 to 8, Monday through Saturday, closed on Sundays. At the new location, 11 to 10, seven days.
No Shortage of Competition
The restaurant colony across the Downtown landscape has dressed up and greatly broadened even in the mere half-dozen years that Mr. Rodrigues has been in business. Some of the new stores are high profile, and pushing hard for business. What is the experience like for Santa Maria? Like starting over? “Not at all,” says the owner. “If I didn’t have that little store across the street, I would not have thrown all this money into this place. I have a great product. I have thousands of people who really want to sit down and eat in a restaurant. And there are thousands of people, as I have said, who don’t cross the street. Now we are both on the same side of the street.”
Postscript
A Westside caterer — featuring barbecue from Santa Maria — for eighteen years, Mr. Rodrigues opened his own retail business at the turn of the century with a unique cuisine, a boast every restaurateur would love to make.
What is Santa Maria barbecue? “A style of cooking that originated a couple hundred years ago,” he explained. “To feed the hired hands, ranchers in the Santa Maria area would dig a hole in the ground. Rods of oakwood they would use for skewers. Like shish-k-bob, they would stick the meat over the hole, and they would burn oakwood. That kind of evolved into cooking oakwood over an open fire. It’s cooked with a dry rub, no gooey sauce. The oakwood gives it most of its flavor. Salt, pepper and garlic, and it is seasoned heavily. For about an hour, hour and a half, depending on the size. We use the same seasoning on the chicken and everything else. Really simple.”
Tri-tips are the main draw for Santa Maria Barbecue, which also features barbecued pork ribs, chicken and pork.
“For flavor,” Mr. Rodrigues said, “we offer a fresh mild salsa. We make all of our own barbecue sauce in the restaurant because we have pork ribs. The beans we make from scratch are grown up in the Santa Maria Valley, which makes us unique. So it’s really the beans, big, buttery garlic bread, the mild salsa, the tri-tip and the chicken cooked over the oakwood.
It’s a simple, delicious menu that I started catering in 1989. And it still works.”
Mr. Rodrigues can be reached at 310.842.8169.
