BRUNSWICK

The Midcoast is about to get a new addition to its small but growing barbecue scene — B Side Barbeque.

B Side Barbeque is the creation of three people who were born and raised in Aroostook County, coming back together to start their first restaurant and serve some mouth-watering barbecue food.

“This is my first restaurant establishment of any kind,” said owner Robbin Colandrea. “I hold a degree in travel tourism and restaurant resort management from college and I love to cook. I think nothing of cooking for 50 or 60 people.

“Kind of as a joke, I said to my one partner, look there’s an ice cream stand in Westbrook. I should buy it; you could run it,” said Colandrea. “He was like, yeah we could do barbecue. I cook barbecue.

“It started out just like that — as a joke,” she added.

While the Westbrook site didn’t work out, after some looking for a good fit they finally settled on the location in Brunswick on Pleasant Street.

“Brunswick has been fabulous to work with,” said Colandrea.

“This just seemed like the right time and the right fit,” she said. “We’ll see.”

Colandrea, a travel agent in New York, currently faces a four-hour commute working to open the restaurant.

“I commute between Albany and Brunswick,” she said. “I come over for three or four days and then I go home for three or four days.”

Whether that transit will continue to work once the restaurant is up and running is yet to be decided, said Colandrea. But in the meantime, her business partner Tim Kelly will be close by, as will his brother, manager and cook Terry Kelly.

“We grew up together in the County,” said Colandrea. “We’ve known each other since third grade.”

Of course, titles are just words at this point. Preparing for the opening just weeks away, all three are hard at work cleaning, painting, laying tiles or doing everything to get the restaurant ready.

“We have done this build by ourselves for the most part, and my partners are both willing to get in there and do what needs to be done to get us open before we assign positions and roles to titles,” said Colandrea.

When a contractor who was supposed to build the restaurant’s smokers, an essential part of any barbecue establishment, fell through earlier this year, the Kelly brothers put their heads together to design their own, with Terry actually fabricating the smokers himself.

Hopefully, said Colandrea, B Side Barbeque is just two to three weeks away from opening.

“The smokers are in, the kitchen is going in,” said Colandrea. “So we are rolling forward.”

Start with soft opening

The crew is setting up seating and tables, coordinating with vendors and putting on the finishing touches around the restaurant. Colandrea said they’ll probably start out with a soft opening so they can work out any kinks.

“We’re probably going to start out just doing lunches,” she said.

“It’s primarily a Texas dry barbecue and then the sauce will be on the side. The meat and the smoke should standalone — that’s how we feel. You should know you’re eating smoked barbecue. You should know you’re having a piece of meat that was smoked over wood and not over propane,” said Colandrea.

Pulled pork, brisket, ribs and chicken will make up the core of the menu, and classic barbecue standbys such as baked beans, mac and cheese, cornbread and coleslaw will be served as well. A variety of salads and sandwiches will also be on the menu.

The restaurant just received its liquor license from Brunswick, and will be serving beer on the premises.

Of course, the menu isn’t set in stone. Being a Maine restaurant, Colandrea said that she also felt compelled to add lobster to the menu. B Side Barbeque will experiment with different sauces, and Colandrea said that if she’s in the mood some night patrons might be surprised to find smoked deviled eggs or smoked nachos on the menu.

“We’re just three County kids that reconnected at the Midcoast of Maine, and we’re trying it,” said Colandrea. “We’re getting a lot of support from the community and everybody’s pretty excited. We’ll see where we go.”

nstrout@timesrecord.com