Review Of B's Barbecue Greenville, NC By H. Kent Craig

Having been a frequent visitor to the Greenville, N.C. area for decades, being a consultant and contractor to various business and governmental entities in that area over the past years, it was like finding a porcine cuisine holy shrine when an old boss first took me to B’s Barbecue & Grill for my first lunch there way back in the when.

Even among fellow four-pig rated establishments, B’s is unique. Its perfect fine-chop Eastern-NC-Style BBQ is simultaneously perhaps the greasiest of all the 4-pig-rated ‘cues, the grease in it immediately staining your clothes if a bite of it falls from you sandwich or fork and hits your lap, while also being probably the easiest to digest, not making you feel too full or queasy basically no matter how much you eat, two facts I’ve never been able to quite reconcile. You eat an equivalent amount of barbecue from Cooper’s, Bullock’s, Wilber’s, etc. and you will feel twice as full as you will from the same volumetric and weight balance of meat from B’s; go figure?

In a segment of the restaurant business known for its unique and eccentric establishments, B’s seemingly goes out of its way to promote their own little quirks, such as not having a listed business phone and for closing down unexpectedly at lunchtime when it looks like the amount of barbecue they cooked the night before will only feed the number of customers in-line inside the building, those waiting outside and in their cars being totally SOL for their barbecue until the next day when they start the process all over again.

Closing down once all their barbecue is sold or looks like it will be soon sold isn’t totally unique to them, Bum’s in Ayden is also notorious for that as well as a couple of other lesser-known places, but B’s does this with such a glint-in-the-eye-delight it makes me wonder at times if they deliberately don’t cook quite enough for the next day’s anticipated demand just to make sure they will indeed completely sell out for that next day. Unlike many larger barbecue establishments, B’s does not and will not freeze and re-thaw and re-serve leftover barbeque for any reason, they simply won’t do that, which guarantees complete freshness but also a bit of frustration if you don’t arrive there early enough for lunch.

One thing that has always tickled me about the very mixed but typically so for the better barbecue establishments like B’s clientele which is a polyglot of and across all economic and social classes, barbeque being the great democratizer of American foods, chuted together inside the tiny dining room drawn there by a common love of some of the best barbecue you’ll ever have is to see the occasional white lab coat with engraved black nametag sported by someone who is obviously a physician from the nearby East Carolina School Of Medicine just down the road coming to, pardon the expression, pig out alongside their less medically educated fellow citizenry, being one member of the same profession that so routinely scolds you for eating such high-fat, high-bad-cholesterol but oh-so-perfect primally satisfying flesh of boar, their sometimes slight sheepish looks modestly communicating "well, hey, it is lunch and it is B’s for pete’s sake and like it’s any of your bid’ness but this is only a once-a-month treat I allow for myself."

If you’re "Down East" for any reason, anywhere within driving distance of B’s anytime close to lunch, you simply have to try to get to them or you’ll kick yourself for not having done so.

Getting to B’s from anywhere couldn’t be easier, just take US Highway 264 East or West and when you get to the Highway 43 exit near Greenville, take that south for a couple of miles and you’ll almost pass it the first time if you haven’t slowed down and are looking for it, B’s being at the corner of Highway 43/W. 5th Street and B’s Barbecue Road, 2800 W. 5th St. & 700 B’s Barbecue Rd. in Greenville N.C. to be exact, a link to a YahooMap is below, and enjoy!

Not too many barbecue places anywhere in the world have the street they're located on named after them.

Map of Bs Barbeque Rd -At- W. 5th St, Greenville, NC 27834

When I mentioned that when B's runs out of their daily cook of their perfect barbecue that they always summarily and unexpectedly close their doors for that day, I wasn't kidding.

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