Leonardo's TST BBQ Adds Hazlet Location

HAZLET, NJ — Charles and Joanne Mule opened TST Country Bar & Grill in Hazlet in November, after starting TST BBQ & Mini Golf in Leonardo back in 2017.

TST stands for Top Shelf Gate, which hearkens back to the origins of the business: Tailgating for concerts and football games.

"We grew rapidly and couldn’t handle the amount of business from home so we were just looking for a kitchen to run tailgating and catering from. Then we came across our Leonardo location," Charles Mule told Patch.

A year after opening in Leonardo, they bought the adjacent gold course.

"We did all this with no restaurant experience, just a love of BBQ, family, friends and community," Mule said.

As the name indicates, TST BBQ is all about the meats — everything from pulled pork to racks of ribs. Among other dishes in the menu, Mule also highlighted the Texas Twinkies, which is bacon-wrapped jalapeño stuffed with cream cheese and brisket.

"We will never sacrifice product for profit," Mule said. "We always buy the best cuts of meat, we truly smoke everything ourselves in-house regardless of the conditions or time it takes. It’s a labor of love and I think our food shows that."

More recently, they have also come up with a vegan menu, which at the Hazlet location includes vegan burgers, a vegan apple crisp and a smoked tofu platter.

The fact there were so many empty storefronts with the pandemic ended up presenting an opportunity for the duo to expand.

"We came across the Hazlet location and after lots of thoughts and negotiations, it was something we thought we could make work. Hazlet itself needed something (in that location)," Mule said.

The recent uptick in COVID-19, however, was a challenge to overcome and came not long after the new location opened.

"(A) combination of this spike and Christmas and New Years falling on Fridays and Saturdays (our busiest nights) was really a tough blow," Mule said. "But we came through it and are fighting forward."

The Leonardo location has a 45-minute eating challenge called the Beast Challenge. Mule said diners could look forward to a new one coming to Hazlet in the next couple of weeks.

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