Food brings families, friends and community together. That’s what drove Pat Gahn, owner of Porky’s BBQ, located at 40 Brewery Avenue next to St. Elmo Bar, to open his own fast-casual, fresh-ingredient barbeque restaurant on Halloween night. The vacant space was previously The Quarry Bisbee, and Gahn saw it as an opportunity to tie together his years of experience in the restaurant industry.

Originally from the bayou of Louisiana, where Gahn grew up in a Creole kitchen, he has been in the business since he was 11 years old. He started as a dishwasher down south and continued his career all the way to executive chef, which Gahn referred to as a “dishwasher with a spatula,” up north in Alaska. (He ran his first kitchen as a chef when he was 21 years old.)

After having been a traveler since leaving home at 17, Gahn has been in Bisbee for 26 years. He originally discovered this town with his parents in 1998. He spent a week here and fell in love with the people in this town. “They were real people,” said Gahn, “and it was a community.”