Review Of Danny's Bar-B-Que 311 Ashville Avenue Cary, NC 27511 (919) 851-5541 (also locations on Miami Blvd. in Durham and on Highway 54 in Morrisville) By H. Kent Craig Reviewed: March, 2006

Out of curiosity more than anything and the fact I was in the neighborhood, I stopped at Danny's Bar-B-Q on Ashville Avenue (near Western Wake Hospital, near the intersection of Tryon Road and US 1/64) in Cary for lunch and I wasn't disappointed . . . I wasn't disappointed because I received what I figured I would . . . pork barbecue, cooked properly, with all the flavor of slightly smoky damp cardboard.

I remember when Danny's first came to Cary many years ago (early 90's, if memory serves me correctly) and even for a Yankee from Florida he was full of vim and attitude, telling us natives that we didn't know diddly about "real" barbecue because we liked Eastern-NC-Style as compared with his "Florida-Style" (whatever the heck that is) barbeque and were basically low-class, shoeless, sister-dating cousin-marrying (well, okay, but it was annulled after a week after I found out she was actually ma' Cousin Charly in drag) toothless and clueless hicks because we didn't like the atrocious meat pulp that he tried to serve us as "barbecue". He even managed to offend the "native" population of Northeast-immigrated Yankees in Cary, something that is actually fairly hard to do, with his Pig-ier Than Thou attitude, and almost went out of business before he got wise and tried to mimic something close to what his customer base actually wanted to eat and now offer several varieties of pork and beef 'cue.

I did eat at his old location near Cary Towne Center two or three times. I just refused to believe any barbecue could be as truly bad as his consistently was back then. Before he moved over to his new location on Ashville Avenue near the hospital three-four years ago, I hadn't eaten there again until the other day.

At least his quality has improved from "horrible" to "who cares" over the years, and yes, I did eat all but one or two bites of the exactly 4 ounces his small BBQ plate offered (the dinner, for two bucks more, gives you 8 ounces of meat), but only after absolutely drowning the pork barbecue in their own mild hot sauce to try to give it at least a tiny bit of actual flavor. At least their French fries were good as was the Texas toast, but the sweat tea was very weak and they still didn't offer hushpuppies which is close to sacrilege of "The Pork Rite" in North Carolina.

On my second trip per my usual standard of review, just to make sure the first trip to a new place wasn't a fluke either good, bad or neutral, let's just say Danny's would have been ahead if I had gone with my first impressions instead of addendum'ing these second ones. I went the same day of the week and the same time (shortly after 1PM, after the worst of the typical day's lunch-rush is over) as the first time to try to assure as much consistency as possible.

The service first time around was very friendly and cheerful. This time I had a waitress whose attitude was, well, untrained at best and almost hostile at worst.

My 4 .oz barbecue plate with double French fries and that obligatory piece of Texas toast was completely un-groomed this time, having a huge, smelly and basically vile-looking piece of pork skin and not the fried kind like you eat like candy but gross-looking partially-cooked skin about the size of your index finger sitting atop the mound of still-the-same bland, near-tasteless except for the mild aroma and flavor burned cardboard box atop a Weber grill barbeque, and there were many more, too many, pieces of partially-cooked fat which are gross-tasting when they hit your palate. Not pleasant at all.

I tried to find a bottle of their homemade mild hot sauce I found last time and all they had was either fiery-hot-hot sauce or a mild ketchup-based one that was obviously created for their beef, not pork barbecue. I tried my best to get my waitress's attention to ask for a bottle of either their homemade mild hot sauce or better yet a bottle of Texas Pete and when I asked for either/both of them, she absolutely scowled back "we don't have any!" and stomped off, so I drowned my pork in their kitchen-made beef brisket sauce which was to say the least an interesting taste combination.

Paying my $8 lunch tab upfront and leaving a $2 tip for my waitperson (hey, what can I say, I used to be a bartender waayyyy back and know how important tips are to service people), at least I knew I wouldn't have to spend another ten bucks just to do this review, being thankful of small favors.

Why didn't/don't I rate Danny's one-pig if their barbecue isn't good? Because, as "not good" as it is, it's not bad-bad 'cue. It's consistently and completely about as non-tasting as you can get, and 1-pig ratings are deserved and re-served for the truly bad, not the truly "who cares one way or the other" . . .



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