On the outskirts of Greenville, N.C., thick smoke billowed from the pit beside B’s Barbecue, a squat storefront on the corner of N.C. Highway 43 and B’s Barbeque Road. It was just past 6:30 a.m. on a Saturday, and the sun was rising as I parked beneath an oak tree, where two of the three sisters who run the place, which was opened by their parents in the 1970s, were carrying potatoes from a shed.
I’d heard that if you wanted the off-menu ribs, you had to come early; they’d be sold out by the time B’s opened around 9 a.m.
“Morning!” I called. “Any chance of getting some ribs?”
“Half rack or full?” asked Tammy Godley, the middle sister. There’s no phone to call in an order at B’s, but there’s a list inside and my name was now on it.
Many visitors in this part of North Carolina, about 80 miles east of Raleigh, zip past the rural farmland and small towns en route to the Outer Banks beaches. But I’d stopped in Greenville, a lively college town beside the Tar River, in pursuit of the increasingly rare, old-school establishments that still cook barbecue the way it’s been made here for centuries: whole hogs, smoked low and slow over wood, served in a peppery, vinegar-based sauce.
This particular type of barbecue, known as “eastern North Carolina” style, was what I scoured the region for over the next couple of days, nearly eating my weight in pulled pork, coleslaw and hush puppies along the way.
Wood-Smoked and Heavy on the Vinegar
“You can’t mention North Carolina without mentioning barbecue, period,” declared Sam Jones, a third-generation pit master and restaurant owner, when we spoke on the phone a week after my trip.
As someone who grew up in a state where “barbecue” was something you did with hot dogs and hamburgers on a backyard grill, my first taste of wood-smoked, hand-chopped pork was a revelation. Twenty years ago, when I moved to Durham, N.C., smack dab between the state’s two barbecue regions, most locals had a preference for either the eastern style or the western Piedmont style (also called Lexington style), where pork shoulders replace whole hogs and there’s ketchup in the vinegar sauce.
I pledged my allegiance to the east.
“The barbecue that’s served in eastern North Carolina today is probably the closest thing you’ll find to the way barbecue was done in the 19th century and even back into the colonial era,” said Robert F. Moss, the contributing barbecue editor at Southern Living magazine and author of “Barbecue: The History of an American Institution.” In recent years, a new crop of barbecue restaurants has opened across the Research Triangle (which also includes Raleigh and Chapel Hill), blurring the longstanding regional lines. Most serve some version of North Carolina-style barbecue alongside Texas-style beef brisket, Kansas City-style ribs, smoked turkey, chicken and sausages with a mix-and-match array of sauces.
At Prime Barbecue in Knightdale, Longleaf Swine in Raleigh and Picnic in Durham — all casual-yet-polished restaurants — you can have a local craft beer with your pulled-pork sandwich. At the Pit, in Raleigh, there’s a wine list, signature cocktails and valet parking.
There was none of that at the humble, old-school joints I visited on my trip.
Ribs and Sweet Tea
When I returned to B’s Barbecue around 9:15 a.m., parked cars and dusty pickup trucks lined the road and a diverse local crowd in work boots, heels and sneakers waited to order. (Since the pandemic, B’s has been takeaway only.) Twenty minutes later, I walked away with a haul — a half-rack of ribs, a barbecue plate and sweet tea — that cost $18 and was enough to feed a family of hungry tailgaters. Despite the effort to secure the ribs (which were excellent), even better was the chopped barbecue: subtly smoky pork perfectly seasoned with punchy vinegar sauce. The flavor left no question as to how the hogs are cooked at B’s, a rare outlier still using wood.
“Most of the places in eastern North Carolina have switched to gas now, and the sad part is, a lot of people haven’t noticed,” lamented John Shelton Reed, a retired sociology professor at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and author of “Holy Smoke: The Big Book of North Carolina Barbecue.”
In an effort to educate the barbecue-eating public, Dr. Reed co-founded the Campaign for Real Barbecue to promote establishments that follow tradition: slow-cooking over wood or wood coals.
From B’s, it’s a winding hourlong drive southwest, past cotton fields and pig farms, to another old-timer: Grady’s BBQ in Dudley. Steve, now 90, and Geral Grady, 81, opened the modest white cinder block restaurant in 1986, where yellowed newspaper clippings and award plaques now adorn the walls. Like B’s, Grady’s is cash-only, but the handwritten menu includes more sides, like rice and gravy, potato salad and green beans, and there’s a dessert case with sweet-potato pie, pineapple cake and banana pudding. At a table inside, I tried a barbecue tray, with a generous pile of peppery chopped pork, sides of slaw and black-eyed peas, still-warm hush puppies and Grady’s Baby (a mix of lemonade and sweet tea).
“That’s one of the few remaining Black-owned places in the state,” said Dr. Reed. “There used to be a lot more. But who knows how much longer they’ll last.”
Last year, the Grady couple was among the inaugural class of inductees to the North Carolina Bar-B-Q Hall of Fame, alongside two eastern North Carolina brethren: the Skylight Inn and Sam Jones BBQ.
Pulling into the gravel lot of the Skylight Inn BBQ in Ayden, with a population of just over 5,100, I parked beside a sheriff’s cruiser (a sure sign of a top-notch barbecue joint, said Dr. Reed) from Pasquotank County, about two hours away. Pete Jones opened this renowned barbecue destination in 1947, and today it’s run by his son Bruce and nephew Jeff. Atop the low-slung brick building sits a Capitol dome replica, installed in the early ’80s after the restaurant was named a “capital of ‘cue” by National Geographic.
What continues to set this place apart is the longstanding tradition of chopping crisped skin into the barbecue, adding texture and crunch to every bite. The menu choices are few — either a sandwich or a tray of barbecue scooped into a red-and-white paper boat, topped with a thick slab of cornbread and a second boat of coleslaw. I chose the tray and a glass bottle of Cheerwine, a cherry-flavored North Carolina soda with not a drop of alcohol, which made for an outstanding lunch.
On the Side: Mac and Cheese and Black-Eyed Peas
For dinner, I sought out Sam Jones BBQ, opened in 2015 by the grandson of the Skylight Inn founder, in nearby Winterville (a second location opened in Raleigh in 2021). Beside a shopping center on a busy thoroughfare, it’s a place where you’d expect to see a Bojangles or Biscuitville, not a restaurant with a smoking pit and woodpiles of Carolina oak in the parking lot.
Inside, the restaurant, with its high ceilings, smooth wooden booths, black-and-white family photos on the walls and a soundtrack heavy on George Strait’s ’90s hits, offers various meats and sides — the mac and cheese and smoky black-eyed peas were standouts — as well as craft beers and boozy cocktails, the inclusion of which caused quite a dust-up initially.
“My dad’s a Baptist preacher, and he refused to come in the first four months I was open,” Sam Jones said, chuckling.
I couldn’t not try the Cheerwine-and-bourbon slushie, which was delicious. But that’s not the point of the place, which is the barbecue, as proven by the sublime sandwich on a soft potato roll named after Sam’s granddad. The slow-cooked pork, flecked with crisp bits of skin, is done exactly as it’s always been done at the Skylight Inn, lightly dressed in an apple-cider-vinegar sauce with salt, pepper and Texas Pete, a red-pepper hot sauce.
While I’d traveled in search of the dwindling number of singular, old-school establishments, I left with hope for the region’s longstanding culinary traditions.
“Barbecue itself is defined by geography,” Mr. Jones said. “And what you call barbecue depends on what piece of dirt you’re standing on.”
As long as someone’s still standing (and cooking) in eastern North Carolina, I’ll keep coming back for more.
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