Not a write-up in Gourmet Magazine or personal connections to rapper Snoop Dogg can shield a business from the most notorious of headaches: bad neighborhood relations.
Reo Varnado and Myra Girod opened Reo's Ribs in a Southwest Portland strip mall in April.
Since then, two large barbecue cookers have pumped sweet, thick Mississippi-style barbecue smoke over Southwest Macadam Avenue. And into cars. And into nearby homes and shops. The smoke, say some neighbors and businesses, is so bad that it's set off fire alarms. Worse, some think it's loaded with carcinogens harmful to their health.
"I can't use my patio; I can't open any windows in the house," said Gerriann Fox, who lives in a rowhouse about 20 feet from one of the barbecue smokers. She fears she won't be able to sell the home she's lived in for 19 years.
"Who would buy a house that's in a smoke factory?"
Varnado, an uncle and sometime personal chef to Snoop Dogg, said they're taking steps to seal the smoke. But, after all, this is a barbecue business.
"If smoke don't come out of there," he said, "there's no barbecue."
Fox has called officials with the city and county, to little avail. The Johns Landing restaurant doesn't appear to be breaking any laws by cooking vast amounts of meat outside.
Reo's Ribs first opened at a remote site on Tualatin Valley Highway in 1999, about 10 miles from downtown Portland.
Foodies swooned for the meats, which were sealed in a sauce more sweet than spicy. Road food chroniclers Michael and Jane Stern wrote up Reo's in Gourmet Magazine in 2005. The Oregonian, in a review that year, noted that "the real atmosphere is the smoke."
Varnado and Girod, however, wanted more business. They landed a 2,200-square-foot space formerly occupied by a Mexican restaurant in the 6100 block of Macadam. The mall offered plenty of foot traffic from nearby homes and offices, and auto traffic from drivers zipping between downtown Portland and Lake Oswego. ......................
