Man Fieri’s favourite California BBQ sparks main well being issues

A Sonoma County barbecue joint that shortly gained over Man Fieri is in main scorching water with its neighbors, who say the restaurant’s people who smoke are suffocating the world with fumes.

A&M BBQ opened in Sebastopol in June 2024 and immediately racked up a loyal following, however now it’s on the middle of a messy combat over its outside cooking tools.

Throughout a Metropolis Council assembly, native residents lastly broke their silence. Megan Cowan described the scenario to SFGate as “untenable” and mentioned situations worsened after the enterprise put in bigger people who smoke with taller smokestacks,.

Pitmaster and proprietor Kristopher Austin was genuinely blindsided by the backlash.

“I by no means needed to be a nuisance to anybody,” Austin informed the outlet.

What began as a neighborhood grievance has snowballed right into a zoning nightmare that might really shut the restaurant down.

Austin mentioned metropolis officers approached the enterprise in March and requested that one in every of its two people who smoke be eliminated. The smoker is now in storage, decreasing the restaurant’s manufacturing capability.

Sebastopol Metropolis Supervisor Mary Gourley mentioned that in April, A&M BBQ was informed its industrial people who smoke weren’t allowed at that location as a result of native zoning guidelines ban outside industrial barbecues there.

All of it got here to a head when the town despatched a proper discover giving the restaurant simply 10 days to give up utilizing its outside tools.

Amid the uncertainty, Austin and enterprise accomplice Finn Liss took to Instagram to deal with the continued drama.

“For almost a 12 months, we’ve actively been looking for a extra applicable long-term location that may higher assist our development and operations,” they wrote in a Could 14 publish.

“All through this course of, we’ve remained in communication with Metropolis workers and proceed working towards options.”

However discovering a brand new, zoning-compliant house in Sebastopol is proving to be an enormous headache.

Current makes an attempt to maneuver the people who smoke to an outdated Mary’s Pizza Shack website and a parking spot at an area Mexican restaurant didn’t pan out.

Gourley informed the Every day Mail the town “values” A&M BBQ and its contribution to Sebastopol’s economic system and neighborhood character.

“Metropolis workers stays dedicated to working with the enterprise proprietor to establish grievance options and potential operational choices transferring ahead,” she mentioned.

In the meantime, because the restaurant’s choices turn into restricted, Sebastopol mayor Larry Robinson advised putting in high-tech filtration tools to satisfy the town’s wood-smoke guidelines—however a industrial setup like that may simply price 1000’s of {dollars}.

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