RESTAURANT NEWS | ALABAMA
Bow & Arrow Gets a Texas-Sized Expansion
David Bancroft takes his Auburn smokehouse across town, adding 240 seats and a market modeled after the roadside stops of his childhood.
BOW & ARROW | MAP | INSTAGRAM
By Eric Barton
6:43 a.m. ET, Aug. 13, 2026
Bancroft
AUTHOR BIO: Eric Barton is editor of The Adventurist and a freelance journalist who has reviewed restaurants for more than two decades. Email him here.
At the Bluebonnet Market in Auburn, the jerky will have its own illuminated cabinet. Employees will slice the pit-smoked beef to order and wrap it in butcher paper, a small bit of roadside Texas recreated inside a new Alabama restaurant.
The market is attached to the second location of Bow & Arrow, which five-time James Beard Award semifinalist David Bancroft plans to open in the coming weeks. Bancroft has taken his original South Texas smokehouse across town, increased it to 240 seats, and built a place where waiting for a table comes with margaritas, ranch water, and the possibility of bringing home a vacuum-sealed brisket.
Bancroft was born in Alabama and grew up around San Antonio, where brisket, borracho beans, flour tortillas, and food cooked by his friends’ abuelas became part of his education. He later returned to Alabama for Auburn University and opened Acre in 2013, followed by Bow & Arrow five years later.
He calls the food “BBQ-Mex,” a reference to the cowboys and vaqueros who cooked over the same fires in South Texas. At Bow & Arrow, post oak and pecan smoke brisket, ribs, turkey, pulled pork, and jalapeño-cheddar sausage. The meats show up again in brisket enchiladas, tacos, burritos, barbecue sandwiches, and wood-fired fajitas. Flour tortillas are pressed to order, and the bar pours more than a dozen variations on the margarita.
The new two-story restaurant takes its design cues from a dark South Texas saloon, with big booths, banquettes, taxidermy, an upstairs bar, and a private-event space. Then there is Bluebonnet, which Bancroft designed partly as an escape from the familiar crowd gathered around a host stand.
Guests can add their names to the list and wander into the market for chips and queso or a drink from the cabana bar. The cases hold beer, Topo Chico, bacon, briskets, and house margarita mixers. Shelves carry Alabama honey, grits, jams, spice rubs, and barbecue sauces.
There are also take-and-bake enchilada pans and taco kits, plus several favorites from Acre, including pimiento cheese, peanut butter pie, banana pudding, and Memaw’s éclair.
“This new location gave us the opportunity to dream bigger,” Bancroft says, “not just building another restaurant, but creating a place where people could spend an afternoon.”
Or at least the time it takes for a table to open, a margarita to disappear, and someone to decide they probably need that brisket for tomorrow.
Richmond chef Kevin LaCivita reunites with his former Blue Goat team at Civita Italia.
By MARIA RODRIGUEZ
