The Barbecue Handoff Connecting Three Sullivan County Main Streets
August 20, 2026
August 20, 2026
Drive Route 17 through Livingston Manor this month and the building still smells like hickory smoke. The picnic tables are still there, so is the fire pit by the water. What changed is the name on the door, and if you look closely, the reason behind that change tells you something about how this county actually works.
For five years, Jennifer Grossman ran The Smoke Joint out of a spot on Old Route 17, building the kind of place where the highway department crew, the library staff, and school families all had their regular order. This summer she handed the kitchen to JP Medina and Sarah Banks Medina, the couple behind Smokd Barbecue, who reopened the space under their own name. Grossman has described the transition as an evolution built on shared professional ties rather than a closing.
That alone would be a nice local story about one restaurant changing hands. What makes it worth your attention if you live in Sullivan County is what the Medinas are doing at the same time, in two other towns you probably think of as separate from Livingston Manor entirely.
Before Livingston Manor, Smokd built its following twenty minutes south in Narrowsburg, operating out of Big Eddy Brewing Company. That's where JP and Sarah Banks Medina first found an audience for their style of barbecue. Now, alongside the Livingston Manor location, they're preparing a third outpost: Smokd To Go in Callicoon, another twenty minutes in the opposite direction along the Delaware.
Three hamlets. One kitchen lineage. If you've lived here a while, you know these towns don't usually share much beyond a river and a county line. Livingston Manor people eat in Livingston Manor. Narrowsburg has its own rhythm built around the Delaware Valley Arts Alliance and the Narrowsburg Union. Callicoon runs on its own Main Street economy of bakeries and boutiques. A single barbecue operation now touches all three at once, and that's a different kind of story than a restaurant reopening. It's a sign of how small and interconnected the county's food economy actually is when you look past the town-line signage. The people cooking your dinner in Livingston Manor are the same people who spent years earning trust in Narrowsburg, and they're betting that trust travels.
The menu at the new Smokd location keeps the core of what made the original spot work: brisket, ribs, pulled pork, the smoked mac and cheese regulars expect from a Catskills barbecue joint. What's new is JP Medina's own background showing up on the plate. He's described the food as a blend of Colombian heritage with Texas-style barbecue and New York ingredients, and early diners have called out brisket empanadas and arepas alongside the standard smoked plates.
That combination isn't a gimmick. It's the same logic that made the original Smokd worth driving to Narrowsburg for, now applied to a kitchen that already had a five-year track record under different ownership. If you were a regular at the old Smoke Joint, the fries and cornbread you remember are still on offer. If you were driving to Big Eddy Brewing Company for Smokd's version of barbecue, you no longer have to.
"It's our DNA," JP Medina has said of the food, describing it as inspired by his Colombian roots alongside regional ingredients and barbecue tradition.
Restaurant ownership changes happen constantly in a county this size, and most of them don't say much beyond themselves. This one is different because of the pattern it reveals. Small business succession in Sullivan County's hamlets tends to move hand to hand, chef to chef, through relationships built over years rather than through outside investment or franchise expansion. Grossman didn't sell to a stranger. She handed the space to people whose track record she'd watched build in a neighboring town.
That's worth knowing if you live here, because it means the dining scene in these river hamlets isn't a collection of independent bets. It's closer to a small, tightly connected labor market where the same handful of names keep showing up under new signs. Watching where JP and Sarah Banks Medina go next, whether that's Callicoon's Smokd To Go opening on schedule or something beyond it, tells you more about where Sullivan County's food economy is heading than any single restaurant review could.
None of this happened in isolation from everything else going on in these towns this season. Narrowsburg's Riverfest, produced by the Delaware Valley Arts Alliance along the Delaware River, marked its 36th year on July 26, with the usual mix of live music, a poster auction, and the River Dogs Parade that draws costumed pets from across the region.
The Narrowsburg Farmers' Market keeps running behind the Narrowsburg Union every Saturday through October, and the lineup changes weekly. Recent Saturdays have brought The Farmers' Daughter & Friends playing old-time fiddle and folk tunes, and Ramona Jan performing meditative handpan music. On August 29, the market hosts a fundraiser for the Narrowsburg Ecumenical Food Pantry, which serves 50 local families within a 10-mile radius, with soup from Chefs Shane and Nikki of Dyberry Forks in Honesdale, bread from Soraia's Kitchen, and produce from Trapani Farms.
Over in Callicoon, the Main Street businesses that make the hamlet worth a weekend stroll haven't slowed down either. Black Walnut Mercantile operates out of the former 19th-century Delaware Hotel, pairing a cocktail lounge with a homewares shop. Callicoon Brewing Company still overlooks the river from the renovated 1880s Olympia Hotel. The Kitchen Table Cafe keeps its Tuesday night international menu going, a small but consistent reason for locals to make the trip down Main Street on a weeknight.
None of these things are connected to the Smokd expansion directly. What connects them is timing. This is the season when all three of these Main Streets are running at full capacity at once, and the barbecue handoff happening right now is a useful reminder that the businesses anchoring your daily routine here are more linked than they appear from any single town's perspective.
If you're a regular at either the old Smoke Joint or the original Smokd in Narrowsburg, the practical takeaway is simple. The Livingston Manor location is open now, serving the barbecue basics you know plus the Colombian additions JP Medina has folded in. The Callicoon location, Smokd To Go, is still being built out, with a smaller-format menu planned around the same influences. If you want to see where this expansion lands next, that's the one to watch.
Beyond the barbecue itself, the bigger thing worth noticing is what this handoff says about how business actually moves in Sullivan County's river hamlets. It's not corporate expansion. It's people who've already earned trust in one town extending that trust to the next one over, restaurant by restaurant, season by season. That's a slower kind of growth than what you'd see in a bigger market, and it's part of what makes paying attention to these towns worth doing in the first place.
Berardi Realty keeps close watch on the businesses and local rhythms that make Sullivan County's hamlets what they are, not because it makes for good copy, but because understanding what makes a place work is the same skill that makes a real estate transaction work. If you're curious what a home search or valuation looks like in this part of the Hudson Valley, Berardi Realty is a call away for a consultation and a free property valuation.
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