Transformers: Rub is closed but will keep rolling

Michael Marx has indeed sold

, the Texas barbecue restaurant that he opened in Riverside back in 2006. The new owners will not be keeping the barbecue concept, which is fine with Marx. He’s taking the smoker with him.

The smoker is a Southern Pride wood-burning oven. “It holds 700 pounds of meat,” Marx says. “I can serve 1,000 people with it.”

Marx says Rub will now operate out of a trailer, which will take up temporary residence on the lot at

, his Mexican restaurant in Locust Point. He will work the next few months on stabilizing the smoker and should be fully mobile by mid-September.

Selling Rub was different for Marx than selling

, the still-running Federal Hill restaurant that he founded and that still bears his stamp.

“With Blue Agave, I wasn’t looking, it came to me. With Rub, I won’t say I wasn’t looking.” He was approached last year, but Marx never came to terms with the suitors. “They came back and they were more serious,” Marx says, and this time he agreed to sell.

“I’m just ready to get away from bricks and mortar,” he says. In addition to the mobile Rub operation, which he will use exclusively for catering, Marx is planning to launch a food truck. “I’ve been thinking about it for a year or so. And now I can do it.”

Look for Marx’s food truck to join Baltimore’s fleet early next spring.