His sauces have traveled the world. Now he’s opening a BBQ joint in Durham.

The greater barbecue world could be split in half, regardless of region or style.

There are the smokers and the saucers.

There are those who believe barbecue can begin and end with the meat, that there is a method to nurturing and massaging seasoning and smoke into a pork shoulder or brisket that cannot be improved by sauce or marinade.

Then there are the saucers who make the countless bottles and gallons of sauces and concoctions that through some alchemy or transfiguration can elevate good barbecue to greatness.

Durham barbecue expert Mike De Los Santos has the world champion ribbons to back up his sauces, but he’s more interested in finding the connections in barbecue than the divisions. When De Los Santos thinks about this barbecue moment he sees it as a search for connection, a line to the past, to the land here in North Carolina and to each other.

“There’s something about barbecue, when you have it all that seems to matter is you’re eating good barbecue,” De Los Santos said. “People with all kinds of differences put their stuff aside to talk about how good barbecue is.”

This spring De Los Santos will open his first restaurant, Mike D’s BBQ in East Durham, located at 455 S. Driver Street where he previously ran a barbecue supply store with the same name.

“A restaurant is the natural progression for us,” De Los Santos said. “I started selling sauces and rubs out of the trunk of my car, moved on to farmers markets and festivals and eventually a retail store.”

De Los Santos made his way through barbecue on the sauce side, inventing an award-winning line of bottles and rubs that have been sought out and purchased by people in all 50 states and 12 countries. He’s shipped barbecue sauce to Ukraine and to New Zealand.

“Kind of crazy for something I made here in Durham,” De Los Santos said. “I wasn’t finding what I was looking for on the store shelves.”

Mike D has a passion for sauce

De Los Santos burst on the national scene in 2020 when he as featured on the Discovery+ series “I Quit,” profiling people who left stable careers to pursue an uncertain passion. That passion was barbecue for De Los Santos, something he was first introduced to while living in Richmond, Va., and tasting smoked pork that friends would travel to North Carolina to pick up and bring back.

“That’s when I first fell in love with barbecue,” he said.

De Los Santos left a career in affordable housing policy work to develop his barbecue dreams and perfect his sauces.

It became a pursuit of balance, of finding harmony in the traditional barbecue divides, De Los Santos said.

“I toyed around with a vinegar and tomato hybrid, bringing together the two sides of North Carolina barbecue,” De Los Santos said. “The vinegar is a good way to tenderize the meat and the tomato brings sweetness and tartness. I developed a mixture that worked for everyone.”

Sometimes when he was just starting out with his sauces and rubs, De Los Santos would hang out in the spice and sauce aisles of grocery stores and notice people struggling with how to flavor their barbecue. So he’d invite them out to the parking lot and introduce them to the sauces and rubs in his car.

“The first time it was successful it was so amazing,” De Los Santos said. “I know it’s kind of creepy so I still can’t believe that ever happened.”

People will say kind things to you if you give them a barbecue sandwich made with your own seasonings. But the first time De Los Santos felt like maybe he was doing something special, his spicy sauce placed third overall in his first competition, the 2009 Pit Master’s Choice Awards in Raleigh.

“It was a really big push for me, this was the first time people I didn’t know where saying good things about the sauce,” De Los Santos said.

In 2020, De Los Santos opened Mike D’s BBQ Supply & General Store, stocking the shelves and showroom with his own lines of sauces and rubs, plus grills, wood, charcoal and anything else one might need to be the hero of the pit.

What he found, De Los Santos said, was that while people were shopping for barbecue gear they also wanted a taste of barbecue.

“People were coming in to buy grills and tools and wood and ask, ‘Can I buy a barbecue sandwich? Can I buy ribs?’” De Los Santos said. “I realized that’s the next thing for me.”

Building a restaurant and a menu

Mike D’s shut down as a retail store recently as De Los Santos began building the restaurant, but the sauces and rubs are still for sale online.

Mike D’s BBQ will be a counter service spot in East Durham, where diners place orders and then have the food served up. The menu will be brisket, ribs, pulled pork and chicken, with specials like wings and chopped smoked turkey.

For sides look for mac and cheese, potato salad and two dishes De Los Santos said have been the runaway favorites: smoked corn and smoked beans.

For the meat, Mike D’s has a 10-by-five-foot smoker being built behind the restaurant and De Los Santos said everything will be cooked with wood and charcoal, mixing in hickory and apple and the occasional post oak.

The restaurant looks to finish construction by the end of April and be open this summer.

“The best barbecue to me is in someone’s backyard,” De Los Santos said. And that’s what we’re trying to create here and build a base of people to get together.....The food part of this is the next step in building this barbecue community.”

There’s currently a crowdfunding campaign raising money for De Los Santos’ restaurant, aiming to collect $15,000.

Until Mike D’s BBQ opens, De Los Santos will be holding a series of pop ups. The next one is scheduled for April 17 in the parking lot of the restaurant.