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Matt Horn, the James Beard-nominated pitmaster who made a name for himself on the California barbecue scene, has closed his last restaurant
Horn Barbecue is permanently shuttered at its location at 464 8th St. in downtown Oakland. The San Francisco Chronicle confirmed the shutdown through Horn’s spokesperson, who indicated that the chef decided not to renew the lease.
The restaurant seemed to have operated in an on-again, off-again status for the past couple of months. One reviewer on Google Maps wrote three weeks ago: “I got the recommendation from the Michelin website and checked the opening hours on Google. It said it was open, I drove 40 minutes and it was closed. Neither website mentioned it. Absurd.”
That experience appears to have been fairly typical of late, with other online reviews complaining about unannounced closures. The site Berkeley Eats actually interviewed a homeless man camping in the restaurant’s doorway, who reportedly said: “It’s out of business. All this man’s places have gone out of business.”
The chef and his Horn Barbecue had earned a James Beard Award nomination. His restaurant was the first Black-owned barbecue eatery in the U.S. to receive a Michelin Bib Gourmand award
But his small empire of restaurants has been extinguished, one joint after another, as a plethora of problems struck. There are lawsuits regarding allegations of unpaid wages. A fire that destroyed one of his Oakland restaurants was investigated as possible arson, according to the Fresno Bee
Earlier this year, a location of Horn Barbecue in Lafayette was mysteriously evicted by the Contra Costa Sheriff’s Office. It has since been replaced with a different barbecue restaurant
One of the final reviews on Yelp for the remaining Oakland business, on a day when it was open, lamented: “From the menu we saw they were out of beef ribs, smoked chicken, rib tips, no peach cobbler, no banana pudding and no Kool-Aid…. Everything tasted like warmed-up leftovers and we will not return.”
