The tacos at Lawrence BBQ were so popular they got their own shop. Here’s when it opens

If he got to pick his last bite on earth, chef and pitmaster Jake Wood said it would be a forkful of tres leches cake. Because it’s convenient and delicious, Wood admits to regularly picking up the version from his local Whole Foods — a whole pan when he can, a single square when he must, possibly eaten out of the plastic clam shell container in the car.

For dessert at Wood’s upcoming second restaurant, Leroy’s Taco Shop, Wood looked to the tres leches, instead making the traditional Mexican cake with cornbread for a bit of a tie-in to his barbecue roots.

Leroy’s Taco Shop will open Saturday, March 25, two doors down from Wood’s Lawrence Barbecue in Boxyard RTP, which opened in 2021, quickly developing a passionate following on the strength of Wood’s brisket and pulled pork. The restaurant was named one of Southern Living’s best new barbecue spots in the South, and Leroy’s has been highly anticipated since it was announced last year.

“This is my journey to be immersed in delicious tacos and Mexican cuisine of all kinds, from all different regions,” Wood said. “We want to put our touches on it, but pay our respects to where it came from and what it’s rooted in.”

Wood draws a line between Leroy’s and the kinds of taquerias and Mexican restaurants he loves in the Triangle, saying he doesn’t want diners to confuse or compare the two.

“I’m not of Latin descent, I’m a white boy from Apex,” Wood said. “I’m in no way, shape or form saying this is a Mexican restaurant. I just love tacos, it’s the number one thing I’m searching for.”

Birria taco phenomenon

Leroy’s began as a lunch special, a way to repurpose the scraps of smoked brisket from Lawrence into trendy quesabirria tacos, griddled in cheese on a flattop and served with a rich beefy consomme.

Fueled by social media, the tacos became a phenomenon. Lawrence quickly realized the curse of a viral dish, as the flaptop could make around 60 tacos every 22 minutes, sometimes being tied up for hours.

“It was fun for a minute,” Wood said. “The Lawrence kitchen was only set up for barbecue.”

The birria tacos became so popular, but such a bear, that Wood eventually discontinued them. Even now, 20 to 30 people come by each week asking for tacos, Wood said, only to learn they haven’t been available for months. From there, Leroy’s was born.

“It really was just this birria taco and I thought it deserved a concept written around it to share with our community,” Wood said.

The inside of Leroy’s is a mix of nostalgia and joy. The menu will appear on a screen built into a wooden box, made to look like a vintage television with knobs and dials. There are VHS cassettes of the “Mighty Ducks” and “An American Tail: Fievel Goes West,” wrestling figures and Barbies and a fever dream print of Macho Man Randy Savage holding a surf board.

“It’s 1992 in here,” said Katie Choate, the catering director of Lawrence. “There will be a TV showing old cartoons like ‘Ren & Stimpy’ and will never play sports.”

Not that anyone expects a narrow taco shop that’s small on square footage but big on dreams to be everything for everyone, or to passively air a day baseball game for the lunch rush in the long, hot summer, but Lawrence and Leroy’s know what they are and what they are not.

At Lawrence that meant quickly reckoning with the reality that barbecue will always be complicated in North Carolina, and that no matter how good the brisket is, or how glazed in Cheerwine the ribs might be, purists will judge anything out of the smoker against chopped pork and vinegar.

Wood said he grew to side-step the what is and is not barbecue debate and just focus on what he liked.

“We just really love barbecue, we love all regions and want to touch on all that,” Wood said. “We have to say, ‘No, this is not bad barbecue, it’s just not what you’re used to.’ ... Those kinds of negative comments are just not invited to the party.”

Leroy’s menu

The Leroy’s menu will include the signature smoked brisket birria and quesabirria tacos, making use of a griddle that’s twice the size of the one two doors down at Lawrence. There will be lighter tacos as well, including a sliced carne asada topped with a coarse chimichurri, and a smoked pork carnitas.

“It’s not something you can eat every day,” Wood said of his birria tacos. “You want a nap after you’re done.”

Sides include a dish of stewed hominy made with some of the birria consumme and a grapefruit and avocado salad for a ray of brightness in an otherwise unctuous menu.

There’s also chip counter and a michelada window, serving the refreshing spiced and iced beer drink in a variety of flavors, including one with a rim of crushed chapulines and a skewered, Tajin-spiced chicken wing for garnish.

The tortilla chips are made from the day-old tortillas made daily at nearby Toledo Butcher Shop, dried out and fried, then dusted with a seasoning heavy on black pepper. The queso has a backbone of smoked poblano peppers and might be impossible to stop eating.

Wood says the smoker ties the two restaurants together, with peppers and meats all getting some time in the smoke.

In the family

Wood came up through the fine dining kitchens of Raleigh, eventually leading restaurants like 18 Seaboard and Plates Kitchen. When he launched Lawrence, it was a more casual menu focused on his eating experience as a kid, but always looking for the next dining trend.

Wood’s grandfather would call him Leroy as a boy, which Wood said he didn’t take as an endearment at the time, instead thinking he didn’t know his own grandson’s name.

“He had a dog he called Leroy, but his name was Elvis,” Wood said. “So I thought, does he just call people that when he doesn’t know their name? So I was Leroy, and now (my son) Lawrence, we’ve started calling him that. It’s all in the family.”

In a pair of shipping containers, Wood has created a version of the family restaurant. Sometimes his grandmother’s apple cider is for sale, his wife, Brandi, is often managing the service at Lawrence, and Wood sees his two kids one day working in the restaurants.

“This is definitely my shot at what I’d call the American culinary dream,” Wood said. “Your kids running around in the restaurant, my wife coming in to work with me. And we’re nowhere close to that (dream), but I promise my kids will be facing our customers at some point, learning how to swing an ax at some point, learning how to smoke meat. This is theirs, this is for them and our employees. We want this to be whatever you need it to be, for as long as you need it.”

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