{Their Hillsborough Street - Raleigh location went out of business for good
as of January, 2006 . . . their location
in North Hills Shopping Center is still open, however . . . this review
was based on their Hillsborough Street location only}
Rumors and unfounded accusations to the contrary, I am not a barbecue snob, preferring NC-Style BBQ over all others and even if I were I’d still salivate buckets over the exquisite east Texas beef barbecue present by The Q Shack on Hillsborough Street in Raleigh.
A couple of incarnations back in this lifetime I used to travel all across the USofA, a lot, and during these sometimes-years-long gigs traveled and spent a lot of time the east Texas region from Houston down to Port Arthur and back up to Tyler and got know the art and Zen of burning perfectly good Texas steermeat and phoenixing the synergy of the base of great beef with a sauce whose recipe was stolen from the gods which, when added to the slow-cooked beef satisfies the human need for culinary haute primitivism, and the Texas-style beef barbecue as created by The Q Shack is better than ninety-eight percent of the bovine chop served in its native State and is equal to the very best of the best I’ve ever had and it’s always consistently so, which earns a solid four-pig, eeerrrr, four-steer rating from me.
While just a tad pricey at $10 for a plate with sides when compared its hometown pork barbecue equivalent of about $6-$7 usually, goodness knows you get every penny of value for your money spent, fully three-quarters of a pound or more of meat being piled onto your plate and is so much to consume that even me with my 6’4”/260 lb. barbeque-loving appetite I usually have a hard time wolfing down all of it.
The sides are nothing to write home about. The Texas-toast (what else would you expect, Grin?) is a perfect palate-cleansing compliment to the saucy beef, but other than that the sides all taste pretty much okay but nothing worth writing here about. I will at least give them credit for at least trying to cook fried okra in season, something most places wouldn’t even attempt, and their hushpuppies are acceptable if you’re trying to skip the whitebread carbs of their Texas toast.
They do serve Eastern-NC-Style-BBQ but, being as honest as I can, I’ve never eaten it, never even tried a mouthful. Why not? Because when I’m in a mood for beef, for Texas beef BBQ, that what I want, beef, not pork. Those that don’t like Texas hooved chopped and have eaten their NC-Style barbecue have all told me that it’s solid three-pig-rated.
While I’ve only eaten at their Hillsborough Street in Raleigh location, since it’s only about four miles from my house and very convenient to me, they do have several other locations around The Triangle, including Durham proper, The Streets Of Southpoint Mall right off I-40 near Durham and RTP, a new one just opening at the newly renovated North Hills Mall in Raleigh, etc.
Click here to go to their website for a complete listing of their locations, their menu and prices, etc.
For those of you not familiar with Raleigh or of trying to find a convenient parking spot usually anywhere near their location which is at the corner of Hillsborough and Horne Streets right across the street from the heart of NC State’s old main campus near the old Varsity Theater (now a bookstore), all I can say is “good luck”. Seriously, if anything does kill them, kill their business it will be a lack of halfway-decent nearby parking. I have been going to NCSU’s campus for the past forty-some years, know many parking tricks and hidden spots here and there on North Campus and around, but I still sometimes have to park in the old Riddick Stadium parking lot (which is closed to the general public but I can park there because I have a DMV-issued handicapped parking placard) on the southern end of North Campus and walk over a good mile just to be able to get to The Q Shack, but yes, even though I pay for doing so physically that day and the next couple afterwards, their bar-b-que is that good, it’s definitely worth the orthopedic-physical price I have to pay.
So, if you’re not familiar with the area, I would seriously suggest you call them first and ask for any help and advice they care to offer about where and how to park.
I can’t do this report on Q’ without mentioning the old Blue Moon Bar-B0-Que Café’ & Billiards which used to sit right across the corner of Horne Street from them just a handful of years back but which is now gone, Blue Moon opening and closing in less than a year’s time.
Blue Moon was a true pioneer, was to the best of my knowledge the first establishment in North Carolina to serve authentic east Texas beef barbecue which was also equal to the very best of the genre I’ve ever had, too. An old childhood friend of mine, Bob Mosley Jr., brought in master Texas barbeque chef Ayden Branch from east Texas where Ayden had built an unmatched reputation over thirty years for being the best of the best.
Bob, having grown up in his father’s non-drinking non-smoking non-gambling non-cussing billiard parlor, “The Empire Club” just down a few blocks on Hillsborough Street where I also spent a lot of my time learning the Science Of Minature Planetary Mechanics too, tried to combine the best of the old Empire Club ethos, bringing in twelve of the best Brunswick Gold Crown tournament pool tables that his money could buy and using them as a co-focal point along with Ayden Branch’s perfect slow-cooked beef fare to try to create a happy, fun, family-oriented place free of the odors of cigarette smoke and alcohol and silly profanities and such, but, but it was not to be. Evidently those who like to shoot a good game of pool on brand-new tournament tables wanted to be able to swill a beer and cuss a little when they would miss a shot and sometimes smoke a cigarette to mask the taste of the beer but not of the food which should have been in hindsight the one focal point instead of sharing it with the pool tables.
When I first stumbled across The Q Shack just after they opened up, what hit my taste buds tasted so eerily similar to Ayden Branch’s just-passed bar-b-que that I literally asked them if I could say “hi” to Ayden, not having seen him in over a year or more by then, they not knowing who Ayden was or even about Blue Moon having been across the street from them at one time. They swear up and down, and I believe them, that there’s no connection at all between the old Blue Moon and them, but it is eerie that the only two great North Carolina Texas-BBQ-missions happened to locate within smoke-smelling distance of each other.
In any case, The Q Shack is open from 11AM to 10PM Sun-Thur and 11AM-Midnight on Fridays and Saturdays (and parking is easier after 6PM-7PM on Friday night and all day and night on Saturday, usually) and is definitely worth the trip if you’re an ex-pat Texan or simply someone who loves the slow-burrned-chopped-steer-extraordinaire or is curious about what it tastes like, Q Shack representing the best of the best.
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