Barbecue, beer and good friends. What more could you ask for?

For Drew Marquis, that’s been his recipe for success over the past couple of years.

As the calendar flipped to January 2020, Marquis found himself at Wood Shop BBQ in a quest to learn as much as he could about cooking barbecue. It’s not that he was unfamiliar with it. Just the opposite. But he was going to take a year to fully immerse himself in all things barbecue. That was until three months in, when the pandemic shut down Wood Shop and many other businesses during that time.

Two years leading up to his shortened stint at Wood Shop, Marquis spent a lot of his time cooking over an open fire at his home. It was there that his obsession with barbecue took hold.   

“I had two backyard size ‘stick burners’ at home so I reached out to some friends that had been taste testers for years to see if they’d be interested in buying some cooked and vacuum sealed smoked meats, said Marquis. “Well our friends were excited, they told their friends and within a couple weeks I was getting spreadsheets of orders emailed to me.”

Expanding outside his circle of friends, Marquis christened his new venture Bootleg Barbeque and took to Instagram to get the word out. Orders poured in.

Those days, Marquis found himself busily making sausage, smoking brisket and pork shoulder, making pickles, and even the sauce.   

“We bought a vacuum sealer and would package everything up and then drive all around the Seattle area delivering it to anyone that ordered, recalled Marquis. “…it was just a full day of getting to share something I had made to people I didn’t even know. It brought me a lot of joy and really just cemented that this was what I wanted to do.”

As demand for his barbecue grew, so did Marquis’ need for a larger space. At the time, Marquis was doing all of his cooking at his uncle’s cabin in Carnation. Borrowing larger smokers helped, but his expanding footprint quickly overtook the cabin grounds. So, Marquis rented a house in the woods in Snohomish and turned it into a commissary kitchen.

“The smoker was parked outside and the living room had seven Craigslist refrigerators to hold all of the product,” said Marquis. “It was a pretty funny set-up.”

In the summer of 2020, Marquis was ready to take his show on the road and serve up his barbecue hot off the coals. He connected with a couple of his friends at Holy Mountain Brewing and Batch 206 and put on a giant ‘COVID-style’ drive-thru in the alley behind the buildings.

Response was overwhelming and “surreal” as nearly 40 cars were in line as they kicked off service.

Knowing that he would need some help to keep the pop-ups going, Marquis reached out to his good friend Brendon Bain. Bain had just left his chef job at Brave Horse Tavern and was running the kitchen at the new Salumi space.

Marquis also reconnected with an old college friend, Sam Carroll. Prior to the pandemic, Carroll was head brewer at Occidental Brewing in Portland and also happened to be a barbecue aficionado.

“As the year went on, each conversation with these guys gradually got closer to all of us turning this into a real business,” said Marquis. 

Marquis and Bain hopped in a car and drove to California to pick up the new smoker he had purchased and did a few more pop-ups at the start of 2021. After a weekend together at their Snohomish digs, the group (Marquis and his wife Nicki, Carrol and his wife Alli, and Bain) made it official. They all became co-owners in the business.

Getting to taste Marquis’ barbecue in the Seattle area did get a little bit harder as he and his wife moved to Eastern Washington last year. Since then they bought a food truck, changed the name to Grasslands Barbecue and have been serving their food at the Waterfront in Hood River, OR ever since.

“Moving to the Gorge had always been part of the plan, we just didn’t know we were going to start the business before moving there,” said Marquis. “So it was bittersweet to leave Seattle after we had met so many amazing people over the year and had unbelievable support from the beginning.”

But don’t despair. Marquis and team are back in Seattle this weekend for their Grasslands Barbecue pop-up at Holy Mountain Brewing. And you won’t want to miss it.

Lucas Portillo, formerly of Seattle and chef at the popular Dualidad Tacos pop-up said, “I live in Texas now but all I want is Grasslands Barbecue in my mouth piece – it’s finger licking good. I said what I said.”

Look for their food truck and smoker to roll in this Friday, Saturday and Sunday beginning at 12 noon.  The Friday menu is somewhat ‘limited’ with smoked burgers, pork belly burnt ends, Hatch cheddar grits, handmade sausages and more. On Saturday and Sunday they’ll have all your BBQ needs met with Brisket, Pulled Pork, Hatch/Cheddar Sausage, sandwiches, Tex-Mex Slaw, collard beans and more.

And if you’re so inclined to drink a pint with that BBQ, they’ll also be releasing their collaboration beer (cans or draft) starting Friday.

After his Seattle stint, Marquis shows no plans of slowing down. “In a couple of weeks we’re driving to California again to pick up an even bigger smoker, continuing to grow and hope to open a restaurant in the next few years,” he said.