At 3 p.m. on a July Wednesday, Matteo Melosi had already closed his Westside Barbecue. “After eleven o’clock the crowds show up, and when all the product is gone, that’s when we close our doors,” he said, explaining the barbecue’s brief serving window. The blame for the shortage can go mostly to a rapidly growing customer base, but a second smoker to help make it through dinner is already in the works.
Just off the train tracks at Madison and Main, the business opened in mid-July in the sturdy brick box that once housed Rhode Brick and more recently Bake Me Crazy. Melosi painted it bright red, and now it really pops from Main St.
Inside, there’s just enough room for a kitchen, a counter, and a single table. The back patio features a few picnic tables and one very large meat smoker. In good weather he can seat around fifty patrons, but Melosi says most customers get their orders to go.
Melosi has been serving up barbecue around town for the last five years and has had his own full-size smoker for about four. He began as the executive chef at the Ann Arbor Country Club and moved on to start the kitchen at the Wolverine State Brewing Co. He frequently caters private events as well and has been serving up his barbecue on weekends at Argus Farm Stop for the last year.
After growing a large following on the west side, Melosi saw an opportunity when Bake Me Crazy departed. He signed a lease with John Fingerle–it’s now part of the lumberyard property–and moved his smoker to its new permanent location.
These days, Melosi spends most of his time at the new restaurant. He and his employees tend the smoker all night before opening for business at 11 a.m. All of the meat comes from Fairway Packing Co. in Detroit, and Arbor Valley Tree Service keeps him stocked with local cherry and apple wood. The vibe is casual: the menus are sheets of loose paper, and sodas are stored in a plastic cooler out front.
“Michigan’s been tagged from the nation [as] ‘the wasteland of barbecue,'” says Melosi. “You go to a lot of barbecue places and you never see the smoker … I saw the void, and I was like ‘Wouldn’t it be neat to have some barbecue for everybody?'”
The menu changes daily but revolves around a few traditional staples. Melosi says his most popular item is beef brisket on a brioche bun, served alongside homemade coleslaw, spicy pickles, rich cheesy potatoes, and, of course, baked beans.
Westside Barbecue, 108 E. Madison, 489-3497. Opens Mon.-Sat. 11 a.m. Closed Sun.
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Rohde Brick
Terry Gallagher, one of the writers contributing to Marketplace Changes in September, caught an error in a different marketplace item, on Westside Barbecue. The article, he pointed out by email, “[m]entions it’s on the site of what was once Rhode Brick. That was Rohde Brick. Unlikely spelling, I know, but you could look it up.”
Gallagher is right about the misspelling, and that wasn’t the half of it: Westside is actually two doors west of the former brickyard office. Our apologies for the editorial errors.
