a place · NCBackyard BBQ Pit

A Black-owned barbecue restaurant on N.C. 55, the Apex Highway, in southeast Durham, opened in April 2007 by Fabianne and Melvin Simmons, who bought a struggling restaurant and made it a neighborhood institution: chopped barbecue and sandwiches, ribs, smoked chicken and oxtails, cooked over wood coals and made from scratch. Its later years were hard — a $50,000 GoFundMe in 2023, a change of owners, eight months dark for renovations before a March 2024 reopening, and in April 2026 a report that it was weeks from closing unless a buyer came. Its status in September 2026 is not confirmed on this disk.

Melvin Simmons ran the pit for more than sixteen years, Fabianne with him, from the April 2007 opening through recessions and the pandemic. In 2023 the family asked the public for $50,000 to keep the doors open. The reports on disk then part: Spectacular Magazine wrote in April 2026 that Angela McLean had taken the restaurant over in 2023, while CBS 17 reported in March 2024 that Damien Holloway, as new owner, had redone 'every single thing in the building' — equipment, floors, walls, ceilings, bathrooms — over eight closed months and was set to reopen, the grand opening slipping for weather. The Assembly, surveying the state's Black-owned pits in February 2026, found the restaurant exploring a sale, its future uncertain. By April 2026 McLean told Spectacular that customers were choosing between a meal and gas for the car, and that without a buyer the restaurant could close by the end of the month.

Barbecue chopped and sandwiched, ribs, smoked chicken and oxtails, cooked over wood coals and made from scratch, by the owners' accounts to the Durham press. Which cut, which sauce and which sides are not described in the sources on this disk, and no price is recorded.

Status unknown as of September 2026: the last reports on this disk, from February and April 2026, had it for sale and near closing. The address is 5122 N.C. Highway 55 (Apex Highway), Durham.