{"id":17438,"date":"2025-07-14T17:31:40","date_gmt":"2025-07-14T21:31:40","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/citystuff.com\/miami\/?p=17438"},"modified":"2025-07-14T17:31:40","modified_gmt":"2025-07-14T21:31:40","slug":"mccrays-bar-grill-opens","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/citystuff.com\/miami\/2025\/07\/14\/mccrays-bar-grill-opens\/","title":{"rendered":"McCray’s Bar & Grill Opens"},"content":{"rendered":"

Introduction to McCray’s Bar & Grill<\/h2>\n

Derrick McCray wasn\u2019t 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.
\nBut he came very close.
\nIn March 2024, a rift with his landlord forced him to close McCray\u2019s 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 \u2014 twice.
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\nNow, after a long and painful recovery, McCray has started all over again in a new city: Lake Worth Beach, where his new flagship McCray\u2019s 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\u2019s Backyard Bar-B-Q food trucks.<\/p>\n

The Legacy Lives On<\/h2>\n

Hickory-smoked baby back ribs, cooked over an open fire and covered in sweet mustard and barbecue sauces, are on order at the new McCray\u2019s Bar & Grill in downtown Lake Worth Beach. (Mike Stocker\/South Florida Sun Sentinel)
\n\u201cI couldn\u2019t let my legacy go to waste,\u201d McCray told the South Florida Sun Sentinel. \u201cI took the opportunity and thanked God, because I just needed something. We just had a few bad breaks, but that\u2019s the true test of the legacy of business, because you have to fight the good, the bad and the ugly.\u201d
\nLegacy is on McCray\u2019s mind \u2014 and illustrated on the new eatery\u2019s dining room walls, where archways frame lively murals of Black, white and Hispanic folks dancing and playing saxophone. They\u2019re 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\u2019re reminders of how McCray has spent his adult life restoring the business financially, which made his late father proud, he says.<\/p>\n

Overcoming Adversity<\/h2>\n

\u2018They kept resuscitating me\u2019<\/h3>\n

The year 2024 had major consequences. First came closure of the family business that he\u2019d 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.
\n\u201cDoctors said I died twice,\u201d the 62-year-old recalls. \u201cThey kept resuscitating me because I wasn\u2019t 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.\u201d
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\nDerrick McCray gets the ribs ready at his new restaurant on Tuesday, July 8, 2025. (Mike Stocker\/South Florida Sun Sentinel)<\/p>\n

The Road to Recovery<\/h2>\n

The health scare and restaurant ordeal eroded his self-confidence, he says \u2014 though not for the first time. Back in 2018, he sold the McCray\u2019s 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.
\n\u201cAnd here I am now, on the great resurgence,\u201d he says. \u201cGod has some sense of humor, but that\u2019s where we\u2019re at now. That\u2019s how we got to Lake Worth Beach.\u201d<\/p>\n

The New McCray’s Bar & Grill<\/h2>\n

As proud as he is about keeping his family\u2019s legacy intact, McCray once preferred football to barbecue.
\nIn 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 \u201cparty animal\u201d who found himself swept up in hard drugs.
\n\u201cI started barbecuing because I squandered everything else in my life,\u201d McCray says. \u201cThe serious living, the partying, it messed up things I thought I had.\u201d
\nHe landed his first Super Bowl catering gig when a West Palm Beach employee recommended McCray\u2019s 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.<\/p>\n