Now Open: Grand Ole BBQ Brings Central Texas BBQ to El Cajon Every Weekend
Grand Ole BBQ Flinn Springs is now open in El Cajon, but you can only get their authentic Central Texas BBQ on the weekends (for now, anyways).
Friends with Benefits: The Butcher and The Pitmaster of Spring Valley
Derek Marso, owner of Valley Farm Market, and Andy Harris, owner and pitmaster of Grand Ole BBQ, bonded over fire & meat.
Stroll into Valley Farm Market in Spring Valley on any given day and you’re likely to catch a glimpse of two local barbecue bosses animatedly chatting between coolers of craft beer and piles of fresh produce. The market’s owner, Derek Marso, and Andy Harris, owner and pitmaster of Grand Ole BBQ, often find themselves losing track of time talking shop, sports, hunting, fishing, or just life in general.
“Andy lives not even a quarter mile away from my grocery store,” says Marso. “He comes into the shop and…a lot of times it won’t even be a meeting. I’ll just see him and we’ll literally sit in my aisle and talk for a long time.”
When Harris first told Marso he was moving close to his store, he remembers saying, “I’ll probably see you every day.” He laughs. “That’s pretty much been the case! We always have a lot to talk to each other about.”
The pair are part of the small but extremely tight-knit barbecue scene in San Diego. Both hail from East County (Marso from Jamul, Harris from La Mesa) and share a common goal: to continue to grow and uplift the burgeoning local barbecue industry as colleagues, not competitors.
Harris admits he had to adjust his thinking to mesh with Marso’s mindset. “I’m kind of a competitive guy,” he says. But when he was preparing to open the first Grand Ole BBQ y Asado in North Park back in 2015, he quickly realized that the rest of the players were on a different page.
“I saw how the guys who’d been doing it longer than me were so cool to each other. I thought, that’s a way better situation. That’s how I should handle myself. Looking up to those guys, I learned from them,” explains Harris.
For Marso, who founded and co-hosted the Behind the Smoke podcast as well as the annual Spring Valley Tailgate and BBQ Festival with Shawn Walchef of Cali Comfort BBQ, bringing Harris into the fold was an easy sell.
“In the barbecue industry, we live off the saying ‘A rising tide lifts all ships.’ When you find like-minded people like Andy, who wants to support the growth of barbecue the right way, you just gravitate towards them.” He goes on to point out that Harris’s authenticity and honesty are other traits that appeal to him on a personal level.
“One of the best things about him is that he’s a no-B.S. guy. You know where he stands; he’s not going to fluff it at all. He’s very secure in who he is…it’s very similar to my personality. It’s just so easy for us to communicate because we know what we are getting with each other.”
The duo’s friendship extends into their businesses as well. Marso’s meat market provides all of the sausages to Harris’s two locations, hand-making hundreds of them three times a week for the team at Grand Ole to finish and smoke on-site. It’s a partnership that Marso hopes to continue for years to come.
“I would imagine it’ll be something that we do until we’re old and gray,” says Marso. With Valley Farm Market set to open a second location in La Jolla this summer and Grand Ole BBQ’s recent renovation of their North Park venue, this delicious joint effort seems likely to keep cooking for a long, long time.
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