Cockeye featured in Valley Magazine

Warren’s Cockeye BBQ celebrates its first anniversary serving fast-casual smokehouse fare.

Meet the barbecue hound of Trumbull County, Erik Hoover, whose low-and-slow smoking expertise has transformed an abandoned Warren building into a destination restaurant.

Erik Hoover, owner and pitmaster of Cockeye BBQ in Warren, Ohio.

Now, hickory hardwood floors and walls donned with galvanized metal and slaughterhouse-style fixtures have created an inviting, family-friendly atmosphere for Cockeye BBQ, which celebrated its one year anniversary in May.

Raised in Portage County, Hoover honed his culinary skills at Johnson and Wales in Charleston, South Carolina. It was there, at an externship at a luxury hotel, where he cooked for former President Bill Clinton and superstars like Barbara Streisand and members of KISS that he discovered his passion for BBQ.

“It was something I didn’t grown up with and it was something I learned to do down there,” he says. “It was a great experience because Charleston has a pretty good culinary scene.”

After graduation, Hoover and his wife, Stacey, moved back to the Buckeye State and Hoover took a step away from the culinary world to run an online fencing business with his brother. But he never really left the scene, as he continued to host barbecues and cater events in his free time. He even participated in sanctioned competitions as a member of the Kansas City BBQ Society.

“I was selling fence by day and going all over the East Coast cooking BBQ,” Hoover says. “I did well enough that I had a couple of national sponsors and a trailer. We would take family vacations and on Saturdays, I would compete.”

Once the catering business took off, Hoover decided to turn his dream into a day job, and he knew just where to start.

“When a building just a few miles from our house came up for auction, we drove down there on a whim and came home with a commercial piece of property,” he says, “Everything fell into place. It’s the perfect size building for the style and quantity of food that I enjoy doing.”

At Cockeye BBQ, it’s all about the fast-casual experience. Hoover says market studies show that fast-casual dining is the fastest growing restaurant segment in the U.S. He thought the concept would pair well with his vision to revitalize the community and offer this working-class neighborhood a place they could visit multiple times per week for affordable, quality food.

“People want real food, and they want it fast,” Hoover says, “and they don’t mind paying a little more for it.”

And for the past year, Hoover and his wife have dedicated 12 hours per day, six days a week to Cockeye BBQ, which so far is a huge hit. Visitors can decide between dine-in or take-out before browsing a menu featuring smoked masterpieces cooked to perfection with homemade rubs and tomato-based sweet bbq sauce.

“I definitely think sugar as an ingredient is well-used on my menu,” Hoover says. “We have a lot of sweet-ish items, but some of them are spicier too.”

Cockeye’s menu is a combination of some of Hoover’s favorite recipes that he has saved and perfected throughout the years. It’s a hodgepodge of platters that showcase the chef’s appreciation for a range of cooking styles, from a variation of his mother’s meatloaf recipe to Brunswick stew, a southern soup made with corn, beans, tomatoes and smoky meats - a staple for BBQ joints in the Southern states. Cockeye’s most popular dish is a $3.79 pulled pork sandwich, which combines flavors from a pork shoulder smoked for 14 hours and a house-made slaw.

“We serve coleslaw on top of the sandwich - that’s how they’re traditionally sold,” Hoover says. “Around here, people didn’t want the coleslaw. Now almost everyone gets it with the slaw.”

The selection of sandwiches, burgers and barbecue plate dinners offer a variety of mouth-watering meat options, but Hoover says it’s the made-from-scratch, casserole-style side dishes that round out the menu’s offerings. For those really looking for bold flavors, try the Mess Plate, a creamy $8.99 entree that tops a base of macaroni and cheese with pulled pork, cheddar cheese, sauce and onion rings.

With massive helpings too big to devour in one sitting, dine-in patrons shouldn’t be surprised when their order arrives at a table in a take-out box - it’s all part of the fast-casual experience.