Decatur, GA — The BBQ Café in Decatur has closed.

The cafe, located at 310 East Howard Avenue, marked its last day in business on July 30. The café opened in August 2020. If offered diners “a taste of the ‘sip,” a nod to the restaurant’s Mississippi origins.

The owners offered patrons a heartfelt goodbye in an email.

“We are forever grateful for your support and friendship and consider it an honor to have brought a little of Mississippi to you,” the owners wrote. “Willie Morris often quoted William Faulkner as saying, ‘To understand the world, you must first understand a place like Mississippi.'”

Left-to-Right: BBQ Cafe owners John Peeples, Lloyd Solomon and Lewis Johnson. Image provided to Decaturish

Here is the full email with more details about the closure:

Howdy!

I want to start by expressing my heartfelt gratitude to each and every one of you, our patrons. The last three years of getting to know you all, often face to face, have conversations with you about everything from barbeque to sage cleansing to Cormac McCarthy to heavy metal, have given me a profound appreciation for the gratification that can result from getting to have genuine interactions with the people who make a business run.

We have shared hot wings, hot sauces, live music, low-country boils, pumpkin carving contests, thanksgiving turkeys and snow days and all the while seen how building relationships with our community can truly have an impact on the space we create for ourselves.

Personally, having the ability to express myself to you all, through this weekly communique and more profoundly through the dishes we serve, is an act of trust, an act of intimacy, for which I cannot adequately express my thankfulness.

Cooking is magic; it is alchemy. The heart of the person who creates is held within each individual creation, and the intent is made manifest with what that creator shares. I am grateful that you all would share in this liturgy with me.

And with all of that soliloquizing aside, it is with a heavy heart that I must inform you that the BBQ Cafe is closing. Some of you were aware of my imminent departure to pursue a life-long goal. However, there are other changes, and the BBQ Cafe must close.

Sunday, July 30th, will be our final day.

We will continue to honor our loyalty redemption and gift cards through then.

We will have all of our regular menu available for one last hurrah.

We will have one last Fiesta Friday of Brisket Tacos with Chipotle Crema, and Chips and Queso.

We will have this final week’s Ice Cream Special of Orange Creamsicle.

And with that, I will turn this email over to some words from our owners, and a final thank you, and goodnight, and good luck.

As we celebrate Brad’s move and are excited for him and his family, the owners, too, are preparing for new adventures. We are celebrating new cities, new opportunities, new grandchildren, all while we each near retirement. It is time for us to close this chapter and to begin several new ones.

We are forever grateful for your support and friendship and consider it an honor to have brought a little of Mississippi to you. Willie Morris often quoted William Faulkner as saying, “To understand the world, you must first understand a place like Mississippi.”

It is our sincere hope that you each understand the world a little better.

— Brad, John Lee, Lewis, and Lloyd

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