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Salt Pepper Oak, a Mississippi barbecue restaurant with a sizable online following, is relocating to Baton Rouge.
The Mississippi location opened near Diamondhead in February 2023 and closed in December of last year.
Owner Vincent Hunt tells Daily Report the move is a homecoming of sorts. While he’s originally from the Magnolia State, he’s lived in Baton Rouge since 2007.
He says he opened Salt Pepper Oak in Mississippi in an effort to learn the ins and outs of barbecue without the “tremendous” amount of overhead required to run a restaurant in Baton Rouge. He’d been commuting across state lines every week since opening the restaurant, and the birth of his third child late last year prompted him to relocate the business closer to home.
“It just got to be too much from a driving standpoint,” Hunt says. “Our daughter was born in December, and our lease at that location was ending in January. By divine intervention, we were able to find a building and sign a lease in Baton Rouge four days after she was born. It all just kind of fell into place.”
Hunt describes Salt Pepper Oak as a quick-service, chef-driven barbecue joint with a focus on live-fire cooking—no gas, just wood and flame.
In addition to smoked barbecue staples like brisket, ribs and pork belly burnt ends, the menu features kitchen-prepared items like brisket smashburgers, nachos and loaded potatoes as well as scratch-made desserts like cheesecake, cookies and sticky bourbon toffee cake.
“I went to culinary school and I’ve been in the industry for 20-plus years, so I really wanted a place that was a little bit more elevated when it comes to the items coming out of the kitchen,” Hunt says.
Social media has played a major role in building the restaurant’s brand. Salt Pepper Oak boasts nearly 125,000 followers on TikTok, and Hunt is hopeful that the restaurant’s online presence will help drive traffic to the new Baton Rouge location, as it did in Mississippi.
“Social media made us a destination restaurant,” Hunt says. “We would have customers driving in from all over the place because they saw what we were doing. We’re planning to keep that going here.”
Salt Pepper Oak will be located at 6721 Exchequer Drive, near Airline Highway. Hunt plans to open in late April or early May.
And unlike the Mississippi location, which operated just three days a week due to Hunt’s travel schedule, the Baton Rouge restaurant will be open Tuesday through Saturday from 11 a.m. to 5 p.m., with plans to add breakfast service soon after opening.
