B's BBQ: A true legend in North Carolina dining

A lot of people like BBQ and there are various regions in the United States that have very different ideas about what the "best" is. In North Carolina we have our own style of BBQ that is very different from say, Texas or St. Louis, which are also famous for their very distinct BBQ flavors and options.

There are a lot of places where you can get Carolina BBQ but there is one particularly famous place where I went to college in Greenville, NC, that was a bit of a cut above the rest.

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Like a lot of other famous BBQ places around the States, B's doesn't really give a crap what their building looks like. It is also located in a really stupid part of town that any other sort of restaurant would never survive in. The area that B's is (or at least was, I presume they are still open) was an abandoned industrial district that had very little in the way of a residential area. It was basically in the middle of no man's land and there was nothing else there.

B's, again at least when I was there in Greenville, was only open on the weekends and they smoked the meats all night long and started serving at 9 or 10am on Saturday and Sunday. Their operating hours were 9am - until we run out of food. Most weekends there would be people there camping out as early as 7am and many of those people were drunks that had been up all night and this was going to be their last meal of the day.

If you are worried that things would get violent out there you can rest easy. The staff of B's are all family members and anyone who is acting a fool in the line will be permanently banned from B's. This was a wonderful way to make sure that people behaved and I only once saw this ever enforced. It was kind of funny to see some members of a drunk group reprimanding their own party because they were really scared of not being able to ever eat there again.

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The line routinely extends down the road but you needn't worry about this. They have an efficient system and are a bit like the soup nazi in Seinfeld in that they have a no nonsense way about the ordering system. There aren't very many places to sit and the area will not be cleaned up until after they shut. Go ahead and complain if you want to, they won't throw you out but will simply point you in the direction of the cleaning products because they do not have time to be wiping down tables.

The thing that makes their food the best, possibly one of the best in the entire country, is their secret sauce that is just oh so amazing. Of course the meats are cooked perfectly as well and this is a family secret that they aint telling anyone.

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one of the really funny things about B's BBQ is the fact that if they were literally any other restaurant they would probably be shut down by the health department. It is one of the dirtier places I have ever eaten and it is clear that the owners have no intention of ever changing that. If a health inspector were to shut this place down I am quite certain that the family wouldn't comply but would just take an ad out in the local paper and there would be riots at city hall until they let them open again. This will never happen of course because everyone that isn't a vegan in Greenville knows and loves B's, and would never do anything to shut them down.

They are so good that they don't really even try to compete with anyone else, they don't have to. They could charge dramatically more than they do and still sell out of food every weekend but the owners are "old school" honest people who aren't all that interested in chasing wealth. They are just kind people that happened to master the art of BBQ and sauce 50 years ago or so.

I know it is unlikely that most people will ever find themselves in Eastern North Carolina and unless you attend East Carolina University there really isn't much reason to ever go there. However, there are people that travel from all over North Carolina as well as even other states that come here specifically to try B's BBQ. If you are even in the are for whatever reason, you should make a genuine effort to go to B's. It's something that you'll remember for the rest of your life unless you are weird and don't like good food.

You want delivery? Forget about it. You want the wifi password? They don't have any. This is just an amazing restaurant that makes their own rules and is truly extraordinary.