a place · NCFuzzy's Bar-B-Q

A pork-shoulder house on Highway Street in Madison, Rockingham County, opened in 1954 by T.H. 'Fuzzy' Nelson and in the Nelson family since. Shoulders cook over hickory coals in pits behind the building; the tray is the Piedmont tray, chopped or coarse-chopped pork with the dip — the thin vinegar-and-ketchup sauce of the region — red slaw and hushpuppies. It holds True 'Cue certification, which turns on wood or charcoal being the only heat under the meat, and it is a stop on the North Carolina Barbecue Society's Historic Barbecue Trail. Breakfast is served from early morning, which few barbecue houses do.

T.H. Nelson, called Fuzzy, opened on the road through Madison in 1954, and the family kept it. The restaurant's own page calls itself a Nelson family restaurant operated by Fuzzy's son and daughter, Phil and Debbie, with Hilda Vestal managing after more than seventeen years; a visitor writing in April 2016 instead named a son, Fred, as the one running it, and the two accounts are not reconciled here. The building was rebuilt around 1978 and photographs of the first one hang inside. The pits stayed outdoors and the wood stayed in them. Both rosters of the Historic Barbecue Trail read for this project carry Fuzzy's — the older twenty-three-stop list and Visit NC's twenty-stop page of 2026 — which makes it one of the few pits to survive every revision of that list, while the Campaign for Real Barbecue certified it separately. Inference — the double listing is why Fuzzy's appears in nearly every written account of the trail, though its own advertising runs to one page and a telephone number. That page also claims notice from The New Yorker, from PM Magazine and from a Congressional barbecue contest. No issue, date or citation is given for any of the three, and none is repeated here as established.

Pork shoulders cook over hickory coals in pits behind the building, the fire tended through the cook rather than set and left. The meat is chopped or coarse-chopped and dressed with the dip; red slaw — cabbage cut fine and dressed with the same sauce, which is why it is red — and hushpuppies fill the tray. The kitchen serves breakfast from early morning as well, so the room is working hours before the barbecue houses down in Lexington open their doors.

Open at 407 North Highway Street, Madison. Three sources give three sets of hours: the restaurant's page says Monday to Saturday from seven in the morning and Sunday from seven, the NC Pork Council says Tuesday to Saturday from six and closed Sunday and Monday, and it lists a different street besides. Check before driving.