Ryan, right, and Richard Carey, two brothers who have developed a passion for smoked meats. Ryan owns Noble Neighborhood Pizzeria & Barbecue, and Richard is the general manager at Wilson County BBQ. Derek Davis/Staff Photographer

If you learned that the owner of one of Portland’s most acclaimed barbecue joints has a fraternal twin brother who is the general manager at another highly respected barbecue restaurant in the city, you might assume their relationship would be a little fraught with competitive tension.

Noble Barbecue owner Ryan Carey hears it all the time.

“When I tell someone that my twin brother Richard is the general manager of Wilson County Barbecue, I always get the same reactions: ‘Oh, that’s weird,’ or ‘That’s competitive,’ ” Carey said. “But when you break it down and look at it, it’s not as competitive as you think. It’s really more of a coincidence than a competition.”

“I don’t see any competition with it at all,” said Richard, known to his friends as Dickie. The 40-year-old Carey brothers are quick to point out that while they both work under the broad umbrella of barbecue, there’s little overlap in the finer details.

“They do Carolina barbecue, and we do Texas brisket and barbecue sandwiches,” Ryan said. “Their atmosphere and style couldn’t be more different, in my opinion. They have 100 seats while we have 12. Their menu has much more depth than Noble’s, and I think they have the top salad in the city.”

“They’re far more supportive of each other than competitive, that’s for sure,” said their father, Stephen Carey of Bangor. “They’ve been close their whole lives, and they only get closer as they get older. It’s good stuff, because it could be just the opposite. Their mother and I are proud of that.”

The brothers have each found their own successes in the niche market of Southern-style barbecue. Wilson County is thriving, and Noble is set to increase its seating capacity by six-fold, moving into a 4,000-square-foot space on Stevens Avenue in Deering Center this fall, and rebranding as Noble Pizzeria & Barbecue. While the Careys worked together at Noble for about 18 months when it launched in 2017, they came to learn that – as close as they are – they needed to blaze their own trails.

“We weren’t seeing eye-to-eye on certain things, and realized it was better to keep our brotherhood than anything,” said Dickie. “We wanted to keep family first.”

Ryan (l) and Richard Carey at home in Dedham in 1989. Photo courtesy of Stephen Carey

WHEN LENNON SAW PRESLEY

The Careys have worked in hospitality since they were 15. They grew up in Dedham, across the street from the Lucerne Inn, a fine dining and special event venue.

“We started working there as bussers, made our way up to serving and then bartending,” Richard said, noting that their younger brothers, Thomas and Travis, also fraternal twins, worked there as well.

Ryan said their experience at the inn helped them build hospitality skills, and also accelerated their maturation as young men.

“We’d sometimes have to get in front of groups of 20 or 30 people and explain the menu and the specials,” he said. “It definitely gave us some character and confidence. It taught us how to be hospitable and how to speak in front of large groups. At 16, you rarely get the opportunity to be the leader of an event.”

After college, the Careys both took bartending jobs in Portland, Ryan at Sebago Brewing Company and Dickie at Ri Ra. By 2010, Ryan was ready for something new.

“I was looking for a career,” Ryan said. “I didn’t know in what, but I knew I wanted to work for myself.”

On a trip to Florida that year, he stumbled on the answer when he saw a man at the Naples farmers market operating a mobile wood-fired pizza oven.

“As soon as I saw the setup, I was like, ‘Oh, that’s exactly what I’m going to be doing,’ ” Ryan said. “I compare it to when John Lennon first saw Elvis Presley and he said, ‘That’s what I want to do.’ I didn’t know how to cook pizza, I didn’t know how to start a fire, but it was an immediate realization.”

When he got back to Maine, Ryan ordered a custom-built mobile wood-fired pizza oven, and booked a gig for his brand-new business, Pizza Pie on the Fly, as a vendor for an upcoming country music festival in Scarborough.

The oven arrived a mere week before the event. “I had a week to learn how to make a wood-fired pizza,” Ryan recalled. “For six days straight, I woke up, made pizza and went to bed.” With the help of Dickie and some other friends, Ryan banged out 350 pizzas at the festival, and his career as a culinary entrepreneur was off and running.

COMPLEMENTARY ROLES

“Ryan was the brains behind the whole operation,” Dickie said. “But I was always there to give a helping hand.”

The two brothers seemed to know their roles implicitly from the start. “Ryan is very business-minded,” Dickie said. “He does well putting together a vision and making it happen.”

“His strengths are really execution and day-to-day operation,” Ryan said of Dickie.

“That was the partnership,” said Ross Endres of Portland, a friend of the Careys who worked the first Scarborough gig and continues to help with Ryan’s catered events. “Ryan had the big ideas and Richard helped do all the daily grinding.”

For a few years, the brothers kept their night jobs as bartenders as Pizza Pie on the Fly developed into a successful concessions business. In 2014, Ryan started a separate business, Fire & Co., to focus on catering. Fire & Co. specializes in wood-fired meat and seafood, as well as local farm produce, some served fresh and some delectably charred.

Richard, left, and Ryan Carey with Pizza Pie on the Fly, working the Old Port Festival in 2014. Photo courtesy of Ryan Carey

Around this time, Ryan was bitten by the barbecue bug. He took culinary research trips through the American South, hitting smoked meat meccas in Austin, Texas; Nashville and Memphis, Tennessee, and Ashville, North Carolina. “I got pretty obsessed with barbecue,” he said. “I was really inspired by it.”

By 2017, Ryan decided he was ready to open a brick-and-mortar commissary kitchen to produce barbecue. But when he signed the lease for what would become Noble Barbecue at 1706 Forest Ave., he didn’t realize that zoning bylaws required the space to be used as a restaurant.

Becoming a restaurateur was a major change in plans, one that Ryan didn’t entirely welcome at first. “There were definitely some freak-out moments,” he laughed. “But I had Richard, and a good team of people around me, and I was young and dumb and thought, ‘What the heck.’

“I thought it’d be a good opportunity to test out a fast-casual barbecue sandwich brand,” Ryan continued. “There really weren’t a lot of fast-casual barbecue restaurants in the Northeast. It was a cool, fun concept and a way to diversify the business model I had going. And to be honest, I like creating brands and companies. I like the rush.”

Ryan had decided that Noble would feature Texas-style, beef-centric barbecue, with a focus on barbecue sandwiches. “I like the simplicity of Texas-style barbecue. It’s generally just salt and pepper for seasoning, so it’s straightforward, and it comes down to the quality and execution of the meats.” And while he’s not a trained chef, he was inspired to concoct Noble’s signature Scrappy Fries, a kind of barbecue poutine: French fries topped with meat scraps, baked beans, cotija cheese, poblano crema and pickled red onions.

“I figured the flavors and presentation would be unique,” Ryan said. “It was like an aha moment.”

MIXING FAMILY AND BUSINESS

Richard, left, and Ryan Carey at Noble Barbecue’s launch in 2017. Photo courtesy of Ryan Carey

Noble did brisk business in its first year and was quickly building a strong reputation for quality. By 2018, Food & Wine magazine would include Noble in its list of the best barbecue in all 50 states.

But by the end of 2018, the Careys learned the hard way that they were better off not working together every day.

“Opening any small business is intense, let alone a restaurant,” Ryan said. “Sometimes your expectations of an employee might be different from your expectations of a family member. And in retrospect, your expectations of family can be a little unfair.

“We decided not to mix family with business,” he added. “We figured it’d be best to part ways and forge our own paths.”

With no hard feelings between them, Dickie returned to bartending at Ri Ra. At the start of 2020, Ri Ra’s ownership team was ready to open Wilson County Barbecue, and figured Dickie would make an ideal general manager.

“Dickie brings that personable, customer-oriented, genuine hospitality side to things,” said Wilson County co-owner and Ri Ra managing partner Spencer Brantley. “You can’t teach that. It’s got to be real. He makes genuine connections with people. He’s just one of those infectious people, and you want to be around him.

“We had no problem hiring people there from the start, because many people knew Dickie and wanted to work with and for him.”

People who’ve worked with and for the Carey brothers tend to repeatedly emphasize their character. “Ryan and Richard are probably two of the hardest-working people I’ve come across,” Endres said. “And they’re incredible family men, dedicated to their families and to Portland. Every time Ryan talks about (the new Noble Pizzeria & Barbecue), he says ‘The community needs this. Families need this.’ He never says his company needs this. He and Richard are both very selfless.”

“They’re just kind, good people,” said Brantley. “They’re in this business because they chose it, which is kind of rare. And I think they both chose it for the joy of hospitality, which is also pretty rare.”

Of course, the brothers’ staunch mutual support is also duly noted. “With them, it’s always been about lifting each other up.” Brantley said.

Noble Neighborhood Pizzeria & Barbecue is set to open in Deering Center this fall. Derek Davis/Staff Photographer

Ryan is now preparing to move into the massive new Deering Center space and relaunch the Noble brand in part as a pizzeria, combining his two main food passions in one venue. This spring, he took Richard and some of his staffers on a three-day “pizza tour,” visiting a dozen famed pizzerias in the Northeast including Pepe’s and Sally’s in New Haven, Connecticut, and Di Fara, L’Industrie and John’s of Bleecker Street in New York City.

“The idea behind a trip like that is, ‘Let’s see what the best is,’ ” Ryan explained. “Knowing what the best is helps you steer the ship to try to be the best.”

Ryan expects Noble Pizzeria & Barbecue to thrive in Deering Center, in the former home of Elsmere BBQ. “I think it’s going to resonate well with the neighborhood we’re going into, or really with families and children in general,” he said. “And having the past 13 years of experience making pizza and barbecue and connecting with the local community is only going to be advantageous for this next move.”

And while Richard still helps Ryan with the occasional Fire & Co. catering gig, the brothers plan to keep their professional paths separate going forward.

“We’re both fortunate to have good careers, and we’ve surrounded ourselves with good people,” Ryan said. “It’s a fortunate place to be, and with what we have going, I’d hate to rock the boat.”