South Florida Sun-Sentinel Palm Beach (Sunday)
McCray’s Bar-B-Q fires up the grills for the big game
Hickory and applewood smoke perfumes the room as barbecue boss Derrick McCray flips 50 racks of baby back ribs in the hot kitchen of McCray’s Backyard Bar-B-Q in West Palm Beach.
“This is the heart and soul of barbecue right here,” says McCray, stabbing and flipping over a rack, blistered with black char, with a two-prong skewer. “You want that nice, caramelized color. You don’t need fancy thermometers to know when ribs are done.”
McCray will need to grill a few more ribs — about 2,000 pounds of barbecued meat, to be exact — to satisfy the appetites of NFL players and VIPs in town for Super Bowl 2020. For his 14th consecutive year, the owner of McCray’s Backyard Bar-B-Q will be firing up his down-home dishes to cater five official Super Bowl parties.
Yes, it’s true: McCray’s Backyard Bar-B-Q has made more Super Bowl appearances than the Miami Dolphins (five). More, even, than Miami: the Super Bowl has been played 10 times here.
Starting Friday, Jan. 24, McCray and his barbecue crew will leave his barbecue joint at 1521 45th St. to deliver platters of beef
brisket and pork sliders, conch salads and shrimp, chicken kebabs and grilled salmon to multiple pre-Super Bowl shindigs.
Then comes the NFL Players Networking Event on Jan. 30-Feb. 1 at Florida International University, followed by the Official Super Bowl Miami Host Committee Tailgate Party on Feb. 2 at Seminole Hard Rock Hotel and Casino Hollywood. “In previous years, we went through 5, 6,000 pounds of meat,” McCray, 56, says. “This year it’s leaner. People want healthy seafood, I
guess.”
This has been McCray’s grilling schedule every year since the NFL called McCray’s to cater the 2007 Super Bowl tailgating party at Sun Life Stadium (now Hard Rock Stadium).
He wagers his family’s 86-year-old secret “sweet mustard” sauce recipe might be the reason the NFL keeps clamoring for his finger-licking ribs.
“It feels like a miracle every year to be called up to the Super Bowl,” McCray says. “We’re that David and Goliath story. We perform like Tom Brady and Drew Brees. We were long shots when no one knew who we were. We just had a barbecue pit, but
when they put us on stage with the high society crowds, we perform at a high level.”
McCray has been sizzling ribs for 16 years, inheriting McCray’s Backyard Bar-B-Q from his father and uncle. At first, he demurred when his father asked him to run the family business. He preferred football to barbecue, and after a stint playing for Florida A&M University, McCray decamped to Los Angeles and found himself swept up in a “hard-party” lifestyle of heroin and crack cocaine, he recalls.
After returning to South Florida in the early 2000s, McCray got clean at a sober house and lived with his par
ents, who imposed strict evening curfews. “I borrowed $100 from my mother and a grill from my dad, who wanted me to stay healthy,” says McCray, who eventually set up a barbecue pit at Palm Beach County strip clubs.
He remembers his late father Herman C. McCray Jr., also a Civil Rights activist in the 1960s, beaming when he told him he’d been invited to cater the Riviera Beach Jazz Festival in 2005.
“My dad was a political leader here, so his opinion meant a lot to me. It was everything,” says McCray, whose father brought Rosa Parks, James Brown and Isaac Hayes to his barbecue
joint. The Congress Avenue Bridge in Riviera Beach was renamed the Herman C. McCray Jr. bridge in 2010.
He landed his first Super Bowl catering gig when a West Palm Beach employee recommended McCray’s Backyard BBQ to the NFL host committee in 2007. His Super Bowl prestige has since lured celebrities such as Justin Timberlake, Brad Pitt and H. Wayne Huizenga to his business, along with presidents Bill Clinton and Barack Obama.
“I started with a small grill but I’ve never been afraid to go after the big stuff,” says McCray, who now operates two McCray’s locations in West Palm
Beach and Riviera Beach.
McCray, who once played football for the now-defunct United States Football League, says he’s fond of the Players Networking Event, a type of “job expo” where NFL royalty help retiring players transition out of professional football.
“There’s life after football and I took the long way around,” McCray says.
McCray’s Backyard Bar-B-Q and Seafood is open at 1521 45th St., in West Palm Beach, and 1549 W. Blue Heron Blvd., in Riviera Beach. Go to McCraysBBQ.com.