20 years since opening in West Ashley, Home Team BBQ owner Aaron Siegel reflects on how it all began
by Lorne Chambers | Editor
It’s a little late for the weekday lunch rush, but Home Team BBQ in West Ashley is packed. While waiting to be seated, I peruse the menu as if I don’t already have it memorized. As if I might get something other than the Reuben. It’s a Thursday, after all, which means it’s Pit-smoked Pastrami Day, and Home Team’s Reuben is one of my favorite sandwiches in all of Charleston.
I spot my lunch guest, none other than Aaron “Fiery Ron” Siegel, founder/owner/pitmaster of the ever-expanding Home Team BBQ empire. I shoot him a wave, and we settle into a table at the back half of the restaurant, in the part that used to be a hair salon and, before that, a mattress store. Several years ago, Home Team expanded its West Ashley footprint by taking over the neighboring space to allow for more seating. They removed the stage where there had once been live music and knocked out the wall so the space could accommodate more diners.
Actually, Home Team’s footprint has expanded quite a bit since it first opened here 20 years ago. It’s grown into far more than the next room. There are now six Home Team BBQ restaurants around the state (West Ashley, Downtown, Mount Pleasant, Sullivan’s Island, Columbia, and Greenville) as well as one in Aspen, Col. But it all started right here in a former service station along Ashley River Road in West Ashley.
“This is the place I take the most pride in” says Siegel as we reflect on 20 years of making some of the best barbecue in the region, garnering accolades such as Southern Living’s “Top 50 BBQ Joints in the South” and “Most Life-Changing Ribs in America” by Esquire.
Three years after opening its original West Ashley location, Home Team Sullivan’s Island opened and the rest is history.
“Managing one or two restaurants is nothing like managing seven,” Siegel admits. But he seems to have found the sweet spot, the work-life balance that is so elusive to new business owners, particularly restaurant owners. “We’ve all grown up. We’re a lot wiser than we were back then.”
Siegel says he’s mellowed out quite a bit since those early days, back when he earned the nickname “Fiery Ron,” partly because running a barbecue restaurant is literally playing with fire, but mostly because of his personality. Siegel is in his 50s now, and there’s a little more white in his beard stubble. He admits that he talks less and listens more these days. But says his wife will still call him “Fiery,” poking fun at him when he gets riled up about something.
We catch up for a minute and then order our lunch. Siegel goes for the chopped pastrami sandwich special with a side of cucumber-tomato salad. I get the Reuben , of course, and add a side of collards.
Good thing that they only do pastrami on Thursdays, I think to myself, or else I might eat here every day. It would be easy to do. Home Team is situated perfectly between my house and the West Of Free Press office in Avondale, just minutes from both. It’s always been in regular rotation for the newspaper crew, ever since it first opened its doors 20 years ago. West Of was brand new then, too, and I can remember bringing the whole staff in on the first day it opened. We hosted the first-ever Westie Awards ceremony in this restaurant. Home Team catered my wedding.
But for all the memories this place holds for me, it holds so much more for Siegel. This is the place where he bet it all 20 years ago, giving up his fine-dining career and trading in his white chef’s coat to stoke the coals all night, attempting to do something innovative in an industry steeped in tradition, particularly here in South Carolina. Siegel is a Georgia native, but don’t hold it against him … except maybe on Saturdays during football season when the place is jam-packed with barking Bulldog fans. Go Cocks!
Football rivalries aside, the barbecue world can also be a tad territorial, and Siegel sure heard about it early on.
“There are a lot more players in the barbecue world, and people have put down their regional boundaries,” says Siegel, referring to all the new places and different styles that have popped up since he first opened Home Team two decades ago. But that wasn’t always the case, he remembers.
“When we first opened, we didn’t have a mustard sauce, and people were pissed,” he says. “So we added a mustard sauce.”
Aside from maybe Sticky Fingers, most barbecue restaurants around the Lowcountry at that time were old-school South Carolina joints, like Bessinger’s BBQ, Melvin’s BBQ, and Sweatman’s Barbeque in Holly Hill. While respecting those traditions, Siegel, who has a culinary degree from the Culinary Institute of America, had a different vision for what a barbecue restaurant could be.
“I came from a background that was big on technique and fundamentals. So, if you had told me then that we would be known for chicken wings, I probably would have been mad,” says Siegel, laughing. “But you can apply those techniques and fundamentals to anything. Nothing starts out and ends the same way. And you have to change and learn to love what people love you for.”
And over 20 years that’s exactly what Home Team BBQ has done, adapted and evolved, while always staying true to Siegel’s vision of a different kind of barbecue restaurant.
“We’ve always been a little bit unique,” he says. “We serve wings, nachos, and Game Changers (Home Team’s famous frozen cocktail inspired by the classic painkiller); we have a great bourbon selection, and there can’t be any barbecue places in the country that do more salads than we do. There aren’t any placeholders on the menu.”
Between bites of perfectly smoked and cured pastrami, Siegel points to various concert posters, autographed photos, and magazine clippings on the wall. In the back office, he still has the first West Of article we wrote back in 2006 framed.
“A lot of old memories are here,” says Siegel.
Beyond all the memorabilia and decor, what sticks out most to Siegel, what he seems to be most proud of, are the people. Yes, the people who patronize his restaurant and come back to eat week after week or year after year when visiting Charleston, but especially the people who have worked here over the years. Many of whom are still with the company.
“It’s amazing looking back at the team of people we’ve put together over the years. The people who have really built their own lives under our roof. Those who went from hourly to management,” says Siegel. “We talk about our culture a lot and try and define what that is. At the end of the day, we try to make people comfortable. We’ve been a company where people can grow and don’t have to go somewhere else.”
Of course, sometimes people do leave. And for those who started at Home Team and have gone on to succeed in their own businesses, Siegel is proud of them, too. He gives props to former West Ashley Home Team employees Madison Ruckel, who went on to start the acclaimed Mama Jean’s BBQ in Roanoke, Vir., and Reid Stone, who now owns Paddock & Whiskey, one of the top bourbon bars in the Southeast.
Aside from both having been part of the early Home Team crew and successful business owners in their own right, both Ruckel and Reid are musicians who have graced the West Ashley Home Team stage (back when it had a stage) more than a couple of times.
This month, when Home Team BBQ celebrates it’s 20th birthday with a huge bash at The Refinery downtown on Saturday, Sept. 26 both Ruckel and Reid will be among the musicians playing, along with national acts like Paul Cauthen, Jerry Joseph, and Domingo “Sunny” Ortiz from Widespread Panic, a band which inspired Home Team’s name. Officially getting things started the night before, Friday, Sept. 25, Home Team BBQ Downtown will welcome Bloodkin.
Other former and current Home Team employees and musicians who have played at the restaurant will also play, including head chef and managing partner Taylor Garrigan.
“Music is part of our DNA,” says Siegel. “We wanted to pay tribute to our past. Everybody that’s playing that weekend has either worked here, played at our place before, or we’ve fed them.”
The 20 Years of Home Team BBQ celebration will be held on Saturday, Sept. 26 at The Refinery, located at 1640 Meeting St. For more information or to purchase tickets visit www.hometeambbq.com
