EDITOR’S NOTE: After six weeks in existence on the Lake Avenue drag in downtown Lake Worth Beach, McCray’s Bar & Grill permanently closed on Sunday, Aug. 17, owner and pitmaster Derrick McCray has told the South Florida Sun Sentinel. He said rent costs and a too-large dining room factored into the closing.
“The place was a little too big and it was costly,” McCray said. “The landlord and the city were always gracious with us, but pulling it off in the summertime and not being capitalized as much as we thought, it was just a bit too much.”
McCray said he’s committed to re-opening the barbecue spot elsewhere in Lake Worth Beach, although no new lease has been signed.
The following is the original McCray’s Bar & Grill article that published in July.
Derrick McCray wasn’t about to let sickness, death and hardship derail a 91-year-old barbecue dynasty, not after all his restaurant achieved: catering 18 straight Super Bowls, serving ribs to U.S. presidents and standing as a safe haven through the civil rights era.
But he came very close.
In March 2024, a rift with his landlord forced him to close McCray’s Backyard BBQ and Seafood on 45th St. in Riviera Beach, a business inherited from his great-uncle and father. Then, a few months later, he nearly died during hip surgery — twice.
Now, after a long and painful recovery, McCray has started all over again in a new city: Lake Worth Beach, where his new flagship McCray’s Bar & Grill soft-opened over the Fourth of July weekend. At 7,860 square feet, this downtown smokehouse is triple the size of his former location and already serves as a commissary for his two McCray’s Backyard Bar-B-Q food trucks.
“I couldn’t let my legacy go to waste,” McCray told the South Florida Sun Sentinel. “I took the opportunity and thanked God, because I just needed something. We just had a few bad breaks, but that’s the true test of the legacy of business, because you have to fight the good, the bad and the ugly.”
Legacy is on McCray’s mind — and illustrated on the new eatery’s dining room walls, where archways frame lively murals of Black, white and Hispanic folks dancing and playing saxophone. They’re reminders of the Black community his father, Herman C. McCray Jr., protected as a civil rights activist in the 1960s, when he brought Rosa Parks, James Brown, Medgar Evers and Isaac Hayes to his family joint. And they’re reminders of how McCray has spent his adult life restoring the business financially, which made his late father proud, he says.
“My dad was a political leader here, so his opinion meant a lot to me,” he says. “So I couldn’t quit because some ancestral thing in me wanted me to keep things going. Now I got the opportunity to feed people again.”
McCray says the new restaurant will host live jazz and R&B, standup comedy and karaoke after the restaurant’s grand opening, which is planned for Labor Day in September.
But for now, this summer, he’s taking it slow, because the ugly part of preserving legacy came so recently at a steep cost.
‘They kept resuscitating me’
The year 2024 had major consequences. First came closure of the family business that he’d inherited in 2005. Then, what was supposed to be routine hip surgery last summer snowballed into six months in an Intensive Care Unit, after a combination of anesthesia and his sleep apnea caused him to stop breathing.
“Doctors said I died twice,” the 62-year-old recalls. “They kept resuscitating me because I wasn’t breathing. That kept me down for a whole half-year, and even when I came home, it was rough, because I was having blood clots, so they put me back in the hospital for weeks.”
The health scare and restaurant ordeal eroded his self-confidence, he says — though not for the first time. Back in 2018, he sold the McCray’s building to an investor for capital to pay for upgrades. He remained as owner under a new lease agreement, but then faced back-to-back COVID diagnoses in 2020 and 2021, followed by the deaths of a cousin, a longtime employee, and his brother, Demetrius, a muralist who painted dozens of Palm Beach County schools, on Memorial Day 2022.
“And here I am now, on the great resurgence,” he says. “God has some sense of humor, but that’s where we’re at now. That’s how we got to Lake Worth Beach.”
As proud as he is about keeping his family’s legacy intact, McCray once preferred football to barbecue.
In the 1980s, after a stint playing for Florida A&M University, McCray says he briefly joined the U.S. Football League. But off the field, he was a self-admitted “party animal” who found himself swept up in hard drugs.
“I started barbecuing because I squandered everything else in my life,” McCray says. “The serious living, the partying, it messed up things I thought I had.”
He landed his first Super Bowl catering gig when a West Palm Beach employee recommended McCray’s Backyard BBQ to the NFL host committee in 2007. He has since catered countless NFL networking parties and tailgates, and his Super Bowl clout has lured celebrities such as Justin Timberlake, Brad Pitt and H. Wayne Huizenga to his business, along with former presidents Bill Clinton, Barack Obama, George W. Bush and Joe Biden.
‘I couldn’t quit’
The barbecue in Lake Worth Beach is the same as what McCray served in Riviera Beach: hickory-smoked tender ribs, pulled pork and chicken cooked over an open fire and slathered in barbecue and sweet mustard sauce passed down from his great-uncle Jay Harvey.
It’s what he calls “Floribbean” barbecue, combining his family’s Bahamian and Southern influences.
The soft-opening menu spans platters of baby back ribs ($25 half-slab, $38 full), pulled pork ($18) and chicken ($12 half, $19 whole). Each is served with two sides ($4-$5 a la carte), which include house slaw, potato salad, baked beans, french fries and mac ‘n’ cheese. There’s also smoked chicken wings ($12-$32), cracked conch with remoulade ($14), and ham and cheese empanadas with salsa verde ($10).
There are also, in limited quantities, off-menu brisket and vegan-only options including tofu and grilled vegetables along with desserts (using recipes passed down from McCray’s grandmother). Brisket and more vegan-only items will be added to the restaurant’s grand-opening menu in September.
His 230-seater also includes two full liquor bars, along with a patio and a hookah bar.
McCray has heard about the recent rash of downtown Lake Worth restaurant closings — Lula’s by Todd English, Not So Bizaare Ave Café, Rhum Shak and Cantina Americana (which his restaurant replaced). But he’s not concerned about his survivability.
“We’re the only barbecue downtown,” he says. “I don’t want the rough market to dampen my spirits about being the best we can to make the whole area successful.
“I couldn’t quit,” he says again. “Because the thing is, I have to pass it along to my sons when it’s time for me to sit down.”
McCray’s Bar & Grill is located at 604 Lake Ave., Lake Worth Beach. Call 561-517-8687. For business opportunities, email Derrick McCray at chefdmac@bellsouth.net.
Sun Sentinel features writer Phillip Valys can be reached at pvalys@sunsentinel.com or X/Twitter @philvalys.
