Quick Take
The inaugural Black Smoke Invitational will bring celebrity chefs, pitmasters and live-fire cooking to Moss Landing on Sunday, pairing a barbecue competition with cooking demonstrations, unlimited tastings and live music. Organized by House of Black Smoke, the festival aims to showcase California's evolving barbecue scene while raising money for a nonprofit that supports hospitality workers.
The village of Moss Landing — population: 237 — is known, by those who know it, as the mouth of Elkhorn Slough, a commercial fishing hub and the site of a major battery storage plant fire in 2025 that made national headlines.
On Sunday, it will also be the unlikely venue for a barbecue competition featuring some of the country’s most recognizable names in live-fire cooking.
At the Black Smoke Invitational, an inaugural festival coming to downtown Moss Landing, five teams will compete to impress a panel of judges that includes celebrity chef Tyler Florence and Matt Horn, whose Oakland restaurant Horn BBQ was nominated for a James Beard Award for Best New Restaurant in the U.S. in 2022, as well as chef Kevin Bludso of Los Angeles’ Bludso’s BBQ and David Olson, founder of Live Fire Republic.
My first question for organizer Nina Horn, Matt Horn’s wife and manager of their event company, House of Black Smoke, is how a celebrity-studded culinary festival ended up at this sleepy hamlet at the edge of Monterey Bay.
She and her husband often pass through Moss Landing, Horn said, and frequently stop at The Power Plant Coffee, where the idea for a destination event brewed at the roadside café. They saw potential. “Moss Landing and the Monterey area felt like a natural fit because of the region’s deep connection to food, to culture, and craftsmanship,” said Horn.
The invitational’s program aims to entice lovers of smoky meat: cooking demonstrations, meet-and-greets with the chefs and judges, barbecue competition viewing and unlimited tastings from the competitive teams are included in the $92 ticket. There will also be live music throughout the day, with California reggae roots band The Expendables headlining. The festival runs adjacent to the annual Moss Landing Street Fair, a destination for antiques and vintage items. Proceeds from the event will benefit the 1720 Initiative, a nonprofit founded by House of Black Smoke that offers financial support to hospitality workers.
Barbecue traditions are revered in places such as Texas, the Carolinas and the American South and Midwest. California has traditionally held up the tri-tip and Santa Maria grilling as the beacon of its live-fire heritage, but that’s changing, said Nina Horn.
“Barbecue [in California] has transformed in recent years. People are doing different styles,” she said. At the festival, guests can get a window into the transformation, from fresh takes on brisket to oxtail tacos.
The event comes at a challenging time for Horn Barbecue. After launching to the national stage as a Food & Wine magazine’s Best New Chef in 2021 and a Bib Gourmand designation from the Michelin Guide (a first for a Black-owned barbecue restaurant), Matt Horn expanded his Texas-style barbecue spot in Oakland to multiple locations. Since then, he’s faced litigation from employees for withholding pay and unsafe working conditions, and several restaurants have closed suddenly. The most recent location closed its doors in Fresno in June after just six months, and the Fresno city attorney is investigating accusations of wage theft.
Nina Horn hopes that, if the event in Moss Landing is successful, House of Black Smoke can tour the Black Smoke Invitational at other locations within the state. “That’s the goal,” she said.
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