Chef Darryl Bell is shaking up the roster of BBQ restaurants in Napa with the opening of his first brick-and-mortar spot, Stateline Road Smokehouse. The Kansas City-inspired barbecue concept opened in early August, making it the first and only Black-owned restaurant in Napa, California since the 1800s.
“The goal is to make it the first of many,” says Bell, the founder and visionary behind the restaurant. Through Stateline Road Smokehouse, the classically trained chef is making his mark in the Rail-Arts district of Napa, celebrating the culinary contributions of Kansas City and paving the way for future Black-owned restaurants to flourish in the area.
Started with Lentils
Bell takes us back to the beginning of his culinary journey. “I was about 8 when I first started cooking,” he reflects. “That feeling of making people happy, and it’s something that you created, was the piece that sort of drew me in.”
The Kansas City native recounts the story of the first dish he mastered that made him want to become a chef. “Lentils were kind of a big staple in the family,” he explains. “I was in a family of 6, so at certain points we didn’t have the most money, so we would cook things that would stretch for a long time and that were inexpensive.”
Bell remembers a summer spent sitting by a big pot of lentils thinking up different ways to elevate the dish while his siblings would play outside. “I was just experimenting, I was 8. I’d get like Lipton tea bags and put that in there and see different ways I could make the water more flavorful,” he recalls laughing.
He found himself mesmerized by the creative process, weaving layers of flavor through the dish with whatever he could find. When he finally got those flavors just right and earned that hum of approval from his family when they tasted the lentils, that’s how he knew cooking was for him.
Stateline Road Sauce into A Stateline Road Smokehouse
Encouraged by his love of cooking, Bell’s next steps would lead him to attend Wylie Hospitality and Culinary Academy, the top culinary school in Kansas City, and then to France, where he would spend six months studying pastry.
After graduating from school, he kickstarted his culinary career working in Napa under Thomas Keller, the renowned fine dining chef and restaurateur. “That was like a straight boot camp,” he jokes. “The first three months were probably the hardest culinary thing I’ve ever done.”
During his time working for Keller, Bell climbed the ladder to executive sous chef and created his signature BBQ sauce recipe. Continuing to work in fine dining throughout his career, Bell started his own barbecue sauce company in 2022 before finally deciding to open his restaurant this year.
“I had the BBQ sauce company that I created when working with Chef Keller, and that during the pandemic, was gaining a lot of traction, so it became something where it started to make sense. ‘Like, okay, I can switch and start evolving this sauce into an actual restaurant—my Stateline Road sauce into a Stateline Road Smokehouse. So, that’s what happened.”
By Nicholas Carr
