Texas BBQ and smoke house meets Latin and Caribbean Flavor at Bucks Fire Grill where a varied menu is offered to excite every palate from down home flavors of homestyle BBQ to exciting salsas and seasonings from the Caribbean
At Bucks Fire and Grill, signature beef is prepared in the Latin American tradition with chimichurri sauce and their rib eye is prepared in the American way -- seared and cooked over charcoal. Their signature pork shoulders are marinated and smoked for 10 hours with hickory chips. All meats are thrown on a grill made by Argentines to produce a flavor the restaurant's owner says you won't believe.
The brainchild behind bringing Bucks Fire Grill, which is located at Village Road and Shirley Street is Brent Fox. He opened it because he simply had a hankering to bring good BBQ to the Bahamian public -- and he had some extra time on his hands.
But he's no novice when it comes to the restaurant scene. In the 1980s, Fox owned a rotisserie chicken franchise which closed its doors after a brief three-year run. He believes that restaurant was a little ahead of its time in the country as Bahamians gravitated toward their fried chicken and weren't really after the healthy alternative of rotisserie then.
Fox who confesses to always having had a passion for cooking said he learned from that experience -- the mistakes made and the positives involved with that franchise -- to come up with the concept for Bucks Fire Grill with input from family and friends.
"I've always had a passion for cooking. When I had [the franchise restaurant], I guess I wasn't quite ready for it either, but now that I have a little more time on my hands, I decided let me get back into the restaurant business again with something that did not have restraints on me," he said.
The open air Bucks Fire Grill is simply decorated with wooden tables and benches and fans slowly spinning in the ceiling. He wanted patrons to feel like they are dining in a barnyard or a country atmosphere, with a tropical atmosphere mixed in. You almost forget that a major road is just on the other side of the fence.
"I was trying to draw on that basic BBQ experience that you get in the States," he said of his restaurant that his been open to the public for a few months.
When he opened, Fox did so with a tight menu.
"We wanted to focus on producing our core meats, smoking them and making them come out just right."
Now that they've got their core items down pat, the menu was recently expanded to offer more variety. Patrons who may not have visited in the last four weeks may be surprised to find a more varied menu with offerings like chicken fajitas and more salads, including a chicken fiesta salad, a steak salad and a signature chicken Caesar salad. Fox has also debuted a bunch of new sandwiches -- grilled fish sandwich, seafood (shrimp and crab) salad sandwich, pulled pork or smoked pork sandwich.
The Latin influences on the menu include offerings like the black bean soup and a red bean soup that have also been popular since the restaurant opened. The sides also take on a Latin flair with their yucca with mojo (boiled cassava with citrus and garlic sauce) and black bean bowl. And dessert isn't left out as dessert is represented in the form of a flan.
In his mission to ensure that Bucks Fire Grill is a restaurant that patrons are comfortable dining at, Fox recently introduced a misting machine system to ensure that diners remain cool when visiting the establishment.
"We've had some complaints since we've come into the summer months that it's been hot, so we did some research with restaurants in the States that had a similar problem, and we went ahead and purchased a misting machine, a system that pumps out a very fine spray of water around the perimeter of the restaurant and when it does that, the interaction between the mist and the air creates a temperature drop between 10 to 15 degrees, so we are able to reduce the ambient temperature in the restaurant by a little more than 10 degrees. We've made it possible for it to feel somewhat like air-conditioning, but you're able to dine outside," said Fox.
From franchise owner to developing his own concept, Fox says his long-term vision for Bucks Fire Grill is to expand into the evenings with more entertainment. They currently offer salsa evenings on Wednesday nights and karaoke on Thursday nights.

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