Auburn eatery features flavors and traditions of Texas, south Alabama
For chef David Bancroft, his restaurants – and his food – are all about storytelling.
Born in Alabama but raised in the Texas Hill country, Bancroft grew up with geographically distant but mutually rich cultural influences. His Alabama roots are steeped in farming and working the land; his Grandpa Kennedy owned a farm with catfish, cattle, cotton, pines, peanuts and chickens. Bancroft and his mother both have green thumbs and share a love for planting
and growing.
But his youth – he lived from ages 4 to 18 in a small town outside of San Antonio – was shaped by Texas ranchers and a cowboy culture as well as the traditions of Mexican-Americans.
“Everybody met over the same fire, everybody shared food and the same stories between both cultures,” Bancroft recalls. And there were soccer games, where the grandmothers of his Hispanic teammates would bring tamales for a halftime snack.
He followed his brothers to Auburn University, where his parents met as students, and there he found a passion for food; he taught himself to cook in the kitchen of Auburn’s Amsterdam Cafe. That experience, paired with his love for farm-fresh food, led to his first restaurant, the now-celebrated Acre, in 2013.
“It was paying homage to south Alabama, to local farmers here in the area, really showcasing the Wiregrass region and farm-to-table cuisine that’s available here,” he says. “Nobody had that farm-to-table relationship, and nobody had any relationships with the local farmers.” Acre, he says, was the story of Grandpa Kennedy.
But Texas was, and still is, a primary influence, and was the driver to open Bow & Arrow in 2018. “All of those memories, and just all of my youth growing up in the Hill country, led to the passion and desire to open up Bow & Arrow, and tell that side of the story
as well.”
A hybrid of cuisines
While Acre is a fine dining establishment, Bow & Arrow is a fusion of Texas barbecue, Hill Country barbecue and Mexican cuisine. Bancroft is a bowhunter (hence the name), and the menu, as you might expect, is stacked with meats: smoked brisket, pulled pork, smoked turkey, ribs and jalapeno cheddar sausage. Homestyle flavor is cooked into the scratch-made sides, like collard greens, hash brown casserole, sweet corn rice and
mac ’n’ cheese.
The Mexican part of the menu is familiar but elevated: There’s fajita-grilled salmon with pepperjack grits, scampi butter and salsa verde, and Blake’s Burrito, with pulled pork, collards, Monterey jack, brisket bark, queso and more. The “30A” special is two cheesy blue crab enchiladas with fajita grilled shrimp and avocado. The soft tacos are made with fresh-made tortillas.
The restaurant uses local purveyors as much as possible. A local hothouse grower supplies tomatoes, cilantro and cucumbers for pickles; Hornsby Farms supplies okra, and Boozer Farms supplies peaches in season. A wide range of dishes on the menu means that the culinary team can incorporate the rhythms of the seasonal bounty into the food. “We’ll do fajita-style grilled fish dishes with peach salsas. We’ll do peach hot sauce and ferment it with the pepper harvest when all the farmers are bringing in hot peppers,” Bancroft says. The mixologists use the fruits of the Alabama harvest to make different flavored margaritas.
“The opportunities, when these fresh produce items and the harvest land, they get so giddy at Bow & Arrow because they just get to cook. They get to go outside of the box, outside of the boundaries and truly create, which I love.”
‘Cook for the locals’
Back in the ’00s as a student at Auburn, he got his start as the kitchen steward for his fraternity, doing catfish fries, crawfish boils and smoking Boston butts. After college, as Bancroft developed his culinary skills, he learned about different cultural influences and genres of food.
“Everybody always said, this is a football town, make football food,” he recalls. “I don’t necessarily want to just cook for
football crowds. I want to cook for the locals. The locals are the ones saying we don’t have good food from Atlanta to Birmingham.”
His restaurants were not immune to the business effects of the COVID-19 pandemic. Acre struggled through; “We were a certain type of food, and we were trying to cook more comfort food meals and just hold on tight.”
Bow & Arrow was also in a struggle, but for a different reason. The original concept was cafeteria style, like going into a Texas barbecue joint and ordering meat from the butcher. “You say, ‘I’ll have some of that, I’ll have ribs, a little bit of sausage,’ and they carve it up, they put it on a tray, and you go down (the line) and get your sides.”
Logistically, the kitchen at Bow & Arrow was laid out for that setup, and while the restaurant had a core group that loved the food, the Auburn crowd “just didn’t really get it.”
He realized a change was needed. When the pandemic hit, he sat in the empty dining room, praying for guidance. “How can I change this restaurant to really pick it up and get more creative?”
He got the vision of knocking out the walls, building a host stand at the front, building and expanding the bar in the back and going to a full bar and table service. “Then as I started sitting down and writing the menu out, it got so much more vibrant and creative, so much more Tex-Mex influence.”
Originally, the barbecue was served with bread or tortillas, and diners chose either barbecue sauce or salsas as condiments. “That’s as far as it went. But now, I’m drawing out entrees and truly making full-throttle flavor, spicy hot fresh tomatillos, the works, getting creative, and all of a sudden you could really see David in the menu and you could see my passion and my story.”
And the story continues.
Bow & Arrow
1977 East Samford Ave., Auburn, AL 36830
334-246-2546 | bowandarrowbbq.com
Hours: Tuesday-Saturday – 11 a.m. to 9 p.m.
Sunday – 10 a.m. to 2 p.m.
Closed Mondays
