Review Of The Barbecue Joint 630 Weaver Dairy Rd Chapel Hill, NC 27514-1479 (919) 932-7504 By H. Kent Craig Reviewed: February, 2006

What separates excellent 3-pig-rated barbecue from truly superb 4-pig-rated and 2-pig-average-at-best fare?

Sometimes it's a slight but consistent lack of consistency, lack of proper "grooming" of excess fat and gristle and bone from the barbecue as is the case with Smithfield's Chicken & Bar-B-Q, sometimes it's a just enough of a lack of consistency of the 'cue itself, and with the case of The Barbecue Joint in Chapel Hill N.C., it's a lack of there consistently not being enough "there" to make it stand out as true 4-pig-worthy.

It's hard for Eastern-NC-Style BBQ to be, well, if not tasteless then somewhat bland, almost always it has either a good to great flavor or a bad to awful one but almost never a taste-less one, but Barbecue Joint somehow manages that. Even when you load it up with many shakes of Texas Pete hot sauce in an attempt to "wake it up", all you do is add a layer of sauce to 'cue which definitely deserves more than a 2-pig rating because it's consistently, well, consistent if bland and definitely isn't bad cue, it's always prepared with great care and excellent presentation, but when you add Texas Pete to it all you end up tasting is the 'Pete and not the 'cue, be forewarned.

My wife and I found Barbecue Joint after she started having to go see friend and chiropractor, Dr. Robert Mayle   whose office is in Chapel Hill, about her back and he knowing of my/our passion for great barbeque and my equal dislike of Allen & Son that's also in town, recommended that we try The Barbecue Joint which he had been to several times. We did, were/are pleased with it after eating there probably a dozen times in the past six months and would like to mutually pass our recommendation on.

Their menu other than barbecue is eclectic to say the least, a lot like Park Diner's which is one of my 4-pig-rated establishments, which of course means I can't eat most of it with my food allergies and all, but both their mashed potatoes and cornbread, respectively, are better than your grandmother ever made.

With their New South Cuisine, it's the perfect place to take a date who leans to the vegetarian or at least non-pork side of the menu, since they have a menu which continually changes on an almost-daily basis depending on what's fresh or at least in season somewhere and which always has plenty for the non-carnivores amongst us to enjoy.

Unless you want to drive ten miles up the road to Durham to one of the "Big Five" 4-pig-rated places (Bullock's, Byrd's, Dillard's, AW's, and Park Diner), more than any other North Carolina city as of this moment, let me give The Barbecue Joint the absolute highest recommendation I can for a barbeque joint located inside the city limits of Chapel Hill, North Carolina:

. . . simply put, Thank God, it ain't Allen & Son, 'nuff said.

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