a place · NCTarheel Q

A pork-shoulder pit on US 64 west of Lexington, Davidson County, cooking on brick masonry pits behind the building. Leon and Becky Simmons have owned it since December 2017. Smoke shows from the stacks when wood and pork go on together; the tray is the Piedmont tray, chopped shoulder with the dip, red slaw and hushpuppies, and a weekend pork-and-chicken special ran at $11.95 in April 2026. It carries True 'Cue certification, which turns on wood or charcoal being the only heat under the meat. It is not a stop on the Historic Barbecue Trail.

The founding year and the first owner are not on this disk; the business is older than the current owners, who took it over in December 2017. Leon and Becky Simmons had worked for the Lohrs about twenty-five years before that, a visiting writer recorded in 2019 — and Paul 'Speedy' Lohr had learned under Warner Stamey, so the line back to Lexington's teaching pit runs through two hands rather than one, and no source read states a Stamey line for Tarheel Q itself. In December 2018 the Simmonses opened a second house, Arcadia Q, on NC 150, taking over from Roger and Lisa Lohr; it closed in late August, and the manager Toni London reopened the room days later under her own name for it, Southern Fire Pit Barbecue and Home Cooking. The hardest thing in the record is older. In the summer of 2015 a Salmonella Typhimurium outbreak traced to Tarheel Q sickened 280 people across twenty-one North Carolina counties and six states and killed one; state health officials declared it over on July 8, 2015, and a wrongful death suit followed that August. The restaurant is open, and John Tanner ate there and wrote it up on April 18, 2026.

Pork shoulders cook on brick masonry pits out back, wood and meat going on together through the day; the smokestacks run hard in the afternoon. The meat is chopped and served the Piedmont way, with the dip — thin vinegar reddened with ketchup — and red slaw dressed from the same jug. Barbecue chicken shares the weekend special with the pork.

Open Monday to Saturday, closed Sunday, at 6835 West US Highway 64, Lexington. Last confirmed by a visiting writer's meal on April 18, 2026. The restaurant's own site refused the fetch, so the hours here come from a listing rather than from the house.