Located just three miles away from the University, Garden District Barbeque combines the speed of a fast food restaurant with the gourmet food of a fancy restaurant.
The area surrounding GD Barbeque is a historic one. The building that houses the restaurant was once the service station that belonged to co-owners Gordon, Mark and David Mese’s grandparents back in 1929. Since then, the Mese’s have stayed within the surrounding area with their endeavors, eventually taking over Smokin’ Aces BBQ in July 2018.
“Twenty years of barbecue places there,” said co-owner Gordon Mese. “Five different names, seven different owners, and finally we just got tired of flipping it every three to five years, and so we’re doing it now with the young man Robert, who was the pit master at Smokin’ Aces for the last five years.”
With 20 years of barbecue already within the building, the Mese brothers decided to keep the tradition going once they took over the establishment.
“One, it’s been a barbecue joint for 20 years,” said Mese. “Two, because it has to be a pick-up-and-go place, the way it is. Barbecue lends itself to that. And then, on top of that, because we always had a barbecue joint there. I trained for opening a barbecue joint for the last 13 years because I’ve been doing competition style barbecue for that long.”
Having been cooking with his parents and grandparents since he was a child, Mese has always been interested in food. And having visited many famous barbecue places in his life, his interest was piqued enough that he began studying competition style barbecue cooking.
“It [competition style barbecue] is kind of bringing barbecue, which I would call America’s peasant food, to a higher, gourmet level,” Mese said. “Truly using specialty type rubs that are made to do things and different kinds of bastings and really using higher quality meats and just to make something as good as it can be. And there is a huge competition circuit around the country.”
It is this style of competition barbecue that Mese has incorporated into the cooking style of GD Barbeque. And it is this style that helps the restaurant emit an atmosphere of causality and family fun, while also offering patrons high quality food in a short amount of time.
“I would say it is a nice, family-run and very casual, just a fun casual place to be,” Mese said. “We want it to be not only that, but on the fast food side, gourmet and fast. So that you get a really high-quality meal very quick…We gotta be quality, we gotta be affordable, and we gotta be quick. And hopefully a happy, nice, fun place to hang out for a little while.”
As a barbecue restaurant, GD Barbeque offers all of the quality meat options that would excite any carnivore.
“Ribs, brisket, pulled pork, sausage,” Mese names. “We do a Louisiana twist on it. We add a little boudin also. We also, on really cold days, since we do a smoked sausage and a smoked chicken, we’ll do a smoked sausage and chicken gumbo. Another little bit of Louisiana on it…We’re trying to be a little bit of these regional areas and turn out a quality product of all of that.”
GD Barbeque is located at 2504 Government St. in the old Smokin’ Aces building and is open from 10 a.m. to 5:30 p.m. on Monday through Saturday and is closed on Sunday.
GD Barbeque operates during normal business hours on Government St. on Monday, Feb. 18, 2019.
