a place · NCGrady's Barbecue

A whole-hog pit at a country crossroads in Dudley, Wayne County, south of Goldsboro, opened on July 4, 1986 by Steve and Gerri Grady and run by Gerri and their son Scottie since Steve's death in August 2025. Hogs cook over oak and hickory coals; the barbecue is chopped by hand and served with stewed collards, cabbage, slaw and potato salad, and tea Gerri brews on the stove. The Assembly reported in February 2026 that it is, by most accounts, the one Black-owned brick-and-mortar whole-hog restaurant at the top of North Carolina's best-of lists, and one of the last of its kind. It opens four days a week.

Steve Grady's brother started the restaurant on a Friday in 1986 and quit by Saturday; he disliked the smoke. Steve and Gerri, married that same year, bought it with bank loans and the backing of the boss at the sawmill where Steve worked. Both had grown up on farms at Seven Springs. Steve had learned whole hog from his father and grandfather, who cooked a couple of pigs a year in pits dug in the ground for holidays; Gerri learned to cook at nine or ten from her mother and grandmother and then her mother-in-law, and told ABC11 in 2021, 'This is cooking the old fashioned way. It's a dash of this and a dash of that. There are no measurements.' Steve cut oak and hickory from storm-downed trees across Wayne County and stacked it beside the building where customers could see it. USA Today and GQ wrote the place up; the Gradys spoke for the North Carolina Barbecue Society and gave the Southern Foodways Alliance an oral history in December 2011. In June 2020 Steve was hospitalized with COVID-19; the restaurant reopened that July on its 34th anniversary. In 2024 the NC BBQ Hall of Fame and the American Royal both inducted him. Stephen Grady died on August 26, 2025; Gerri and Scottie kept the pit going.

Steve started the charcoal fires at eleven at night and came back at four in the morning to put the hogs on over hickory and oak; by eight the barbecue was ready. The meat is hand-chopped and dressed with a spicy vinegar sauce, and the plate carries slaw, hushpuppies — fried cornmeal fritters — and the day's vegetables, stewed collards, cabbage and potato salad, peeled and chopped by hand that morning.

Open four days a week at 3096 Arrington Bridge Road, Dudley, run by Gerri Grady and her son Scottie since Steve Grady's death in August 2025. Days and hours are from Our State (2013) and The Assembly (February 2026); check before driving.