FOOD & DRINK
B luegrass
B arrel
H
ouse
is ‘like a family’
Story and photos by Taylor Six
N
estled off the side of Big Hill Avenue in Richmond, is an
800 square-foot, hole in the wall that is the Bluegrass
Barrel House.
And while the space may be small, the following and
community that bar owners Anthony and Raela Phoenix have
welcomed, is not.
In fact, according to Raela, part of the reason the couple chose
the name Bluegrass Barrel House for their business is because
it is like a home for many people.
“We are like a family,” Raela said.
The Bluegrass Barrel House, or BBH for short, opened almost
four years ago after career bartender Raela left working at
Paddy Wagon, confident that the following she had started 12
years ago would support her if she tried to own her own bar.
“I thought, ‘I can do this, I can open my own place,’ so I decid-
ed to open it,” Raela said.
And she did, along with the help of her husband, Anthony, who
is currently stationed overseas in Jordan for a deployment with
the U.S. Army.
“I am holding it down while he is gone. It’s a lot,” she said
laughing.
Having her own bar now, Raela says it is different than work-
ing for someone else but that because her following was already
so strong, the business has been able to thrive.
“It is cool working for yourself, but you also work harder for
yourself because it is you,” she said. “There’s nobody you can
blame anything on, it is all on you. You know, it was a lot of stuff
that you don’t realize going into a business. But with this busi-
ness, it was easy that we already had a following and were able
to build on that. That is why BBH has been so successful, be-
cause we build on relationships here.”
If you ask Raela, she describes the BBH as a “working class
bar” but uses a song by one of her favorite singers, Cody Jinks,
to describe the vibe saying that everyone is “somewhere in the
middle” of something.
“With this bar, we are a bar but we are somewhere in the
middle of everything,” she explained. “Somewhere in the middle
with class, somewhere in the middle of a divorce, somewhere in
the middle of a love triangle, someone is always somewhere in
the middle of something.”
And that’s why, when describing the atmosphere of the bar,
she wanted to create a space that felt open to anyone, no matter
who stepped in the door.
Before BBH, the space was an old biker bar, so when the Phoe-
nixes took it over, they wanted to still welcome the bikers and
anyone else who wanted to be a part of the BBH family.
“We basically had to figure out how to combine, people who
aren’t bikers and bikers so we kinda came in and said, ‘We are
F E B R UA RY- M A R C H 2 02 0
Madison Magazine