Smithfield’s Chicken N BBQ

Wow! Delicious food, great service. The restaurant was clean, the restroom was nice. I don’t have one bad thing to say. It was my first time eating North Carolina BBQ and I loved it!

I ate at the Smithfield’s yesterday in Graham, NC & liked the fried chicken so much I wanted some more today. Would hardly give any fast food establishments 4 stars, however the fried chicken is very good, but the «Old School» TBT southern charm & hospitality is way above good. This must be why this chain seems to be ubiquitous in eastern NC. The service is better than some if not most of sit down chain restaurants. It really is impressive. Not a fan of the eastern Carolina BBQ vinegar based sauce so I was not willing to try. However, it appears the locals love it from the amount of folks ordering it who have the indigenous accent. Very clean quaint atmosphere w quick access to interstates. If you’re nearby, it’s worth the try. Mmm sounds too much like an ad. It’s not. Had 3 pcs of white meat chicken w fries, cole slaw & a heaping amount of hush puppies. Only $ 10.44.

Great food, awesome hospitality. Never needed anything they came to the table and provided us with everything we needed from sauces, drinks and even a free dessert for all of us. Sherry was phenomenal as well as the rest of the staff. I am from MD, but will definitely come back to visit again.

The food was very good, the negative was it was served on styrofoam plates with plastic utensils. Staff was nice but not very knowledgable on the food, had a tough time explaining the menu. Being from Texas I found the BBQ sauce a little underwhelming. Very nice décor, couldn’t figure out why the chairs were all the same style but different shades of wood. High ceilings and had a 1940’s feel.

This looks like a newer building and it’s really nice and clean looking inside. Spacious dining room with high ceilings. 50s movie posters. Flatscreen TV with ESPN playing. I’m a fan of Smithfield’s in general, they’re my favorite local NC «chain» for BBQ. This is the nicest location I’ve been to.

Food is good but not my palate. Chicken breast was very juicy definitely a great value for the price. Staff comes by to check on you for refills & pickup trash. Free refills. Bathrooms were immaculate. Restaurant was very clean for a fast food restaurant

Smithfields was a great place for the entire family after a long drive from CT. We had a white and dark combo plate for sharing, a shrimp ‘snack’ for the kids plus endless lemonade. Everything was delicious, especially the Brunswick Stew. The staff was super helpful and checked up on us several times. Spacious and clean, we would visit again.

Food was underwhelming, children’s portion of chicken tender meal was 1 tender. Service was poor! Dining area was clean.

Great food! Always hot. Even though most of the time I got to pull up and wait a couple min. But it’s worth the wait.

This place was exactly what we were looking for on our trip home through North Carolina. The food was fast and delicious, and the young women working were the friendliest servers I’ve ever seen.

Unassuming & modern look on the outside, I took to the drive thru, had a bit of a language barrier (I had trouble understanding the southern dialect, it was thick as glue) once we got past that barrier, a bit confusing ordering if you know nothing about the place, the menu board helped but was confusing or I was just hangry! I chose a combo platter which consisted of bbq pulled pork, baked beans, tater salad & hush puppies.
As stated in previous reviews, it’s Carolina style Q; vinegar based, the pulled pork is shredded to smithereens and somewhat dry, taste as though it’s been marinated in the vinegar along with some pepper flakes? (red flakes throughout the meat) and spices, I had a hard time picking up the smokey flavor but it was good once I doused it with some bbq sauce, I thought it wouldn’t mesh well with the heavy vinegar flavor but it worked out & tasted pretty good. Regular bbq sauce is the The hush puppies are moist on the inside and crunchier on the outside, a bit of sweetness lends to a pretty good pup to chomp down, the beans were average with decent flavor, it’s difficult to get tater salad just right, they got it wrong! it was a bit too thin for my liking and too light in color, I tend to like mine heavier on the mustard side, I didn’t detect any eggs at all, it was very runny in texture which made me run to the garbage, I’d like to try a few other offerings before I raise the bar, I shall return!

Great service, clean restaurant, BBQ was very good. Hush puppies are to die for! Pork was a little dry. Brunswick stew was excellent.

Good food, great customer service and very family friendly! Definite must try when in Rocky Mount, NC.

Clean, friendly service, very good food! Great stop off 95, a wasteland for decent food

Typical southern fried chicken joint. Do not go here if you want something healthy. I asked the lady if they have anything green and she literally laughed at me. I smiled back and asked for fried chicken! Good chicken though!

We were those people who stopped in 15 minutes before closing (sorry!) and they were still super friendly! They made us some yummy fresh hush puppies, we opted to eat outside on the patio so they could close up inside. This place also had some of the cleanest public bathrooms I have ever been in, a relief to a weary travler. We will defintely be back again.

Loved the BBQ sandwich. Super friendly and clean. I’ll be sure to stop here again if I’m in the area

Good Q, GREAT fried chicken, GREAT service… the «tailgate» is a tremendous good deal… My doesn’t drink sweet T and wasn’t made to feel like she was from Mars… This is East Carolina in nice little package. If they add Calabash fish and shrimp it would be sand hill heaven.

This fast food BBQ restaurant is a welcome change from the usual suspects. Lots of great parking, seating and space make this a great choice for the family stop. I loved the BBQ sauce, which we had to ask for, and I loved the service.

BUZZ:
— Hush Puppies (⁶⁄₁₀)
— BBQ (⁴⁄₁₀)
— Sweet Tea (⁵⁄₁₀)
I ALSO TRIED:
— Slaw (⁴⁄₁₀)
— Baked Beans (⁵⁄₁₀)
Gotta give a shout out to Jack F. His review was the reason I checked it out, and was my instruction manual.
Having said that, let me give you some additional pointers so you don’t look like an idiot like me. Like you learned in Grade School, read all the instructions first!
0) Before you decide on coming here, to give you an idea of what this place is, imagine a Panera serving BBQ (sans pagers and elegance).
1) Purchasing your food works a lot like fast food. Look at the menu, stand in line, order, and pay.
2) People in NC use the term «BBQ» to refer to their pulled pork. BBQ is not a type of food, like most of us think, it is a specific dish.
3) «BBQ Sauce» looks like a jar of vinegar with pepper flakes and other spices swimming in it. Do NOT look for Sweet Baby Rays or KC Masterpiece in this state!
4) Afterwards, you get a number, but it’s not like Culver’s or Smashburger where you get a table sign. Just go have a seat somewhere and wait.
5) They will yell your number (this is where I f’d up). Simply stare in the direction of the voice and wave when your number is called. They will bring the tray to you.
6) You should order Sweat Tea, not only because it’s a staple in these parts, but because people will come around with pitchers and offer to fill up your cup! That’s cool!
Well, let’s get right to it! I ordered the Regular BBQ Platter, which is BBQ plus 2 sides. Hushpuppies came with it automatically.
BBQ
Of all the styles of barbecue in the country (that I know of), Carolina is my least favorite. When it comes to ribs, I like KC or St. Louis style and for pulled pork I like Texas style. Smithfield’s pulled pork looks normal, but then it looks like it was either tossed in or cooked in some kind of sauce, perhaps their Carolina sauce (which is, like I said above, vinegar based). It’s evidenced by the pepper flakes throughout. The texture is just barely moist enough to be acceptable, but nowhere near as moist as Texas style.
Flavorwise, you can tell it has at least been in contact with vinegar at some point, but it’s barely noticeable. It has very small traces of smoke, but nothing like most other styles. For seasoning, the vinegar definitely helped in this area, as you can mostly eat this by itself (though the texture is just a tad too dry to enjoy it). The available sauces: Carolina Sauce (jeez…more vinegar!) or hot sauce (think Louisiana Hot Sauce) are your only options. I really think that a regular BBQ sauce might actually make this delicious, as the texture is almost there, and the sauce would help, the only question is whether or not the sauce would clash with the vinegar flavor/​seasoning that’s already there.
All in all, not impressed.
HUSH PUPPIES
The crust is nice and crunchy, and the inside tasted like sweet corn bread. Someone said to put hot sauce on it, and honestly, it didn’t work for me. It’s not that it was bad, but the flavors didn’t mix. I mean like oil and water, as in, I tasted the hush puppy and then separately the hot sauce, the flavors didn’t combine. They were decent, but nothing to go crazy about.
SLAW
Oh yeah, it’s not «cole slaw» it’s «slaw.» The sauce is pretty good. It’s a little sweet, like KFC. The problem was the cabbage. It tasted too… earthy? It’s like the hush puppies and hot sauce, the flavors didn’t mix or combine. It’s like I was taking a fork full of plain cabbage, and then later a spoonful of sauce. If you think of KFC cole slaw, you don’t think of the cabbage and sauce as separate things, but as one harmonious concoction. Wasn’t terrible, but not really a fan.
BAKED BEANS
Texture is pretty similar to most baked beans, but the flavor is a little different. Most baked beans are sweet, like Bush’s baked beans, but these were less so and a little more… smoky? Unique, but still nothing really exciting.
SWEET TEA
When you order this there, it tastes good and balanced, like most sweet teas. For $ 3.99 you can buy a whole gallon of it! Even though I was only staying 1 night, I bought a gallon to drink at the hotel. I had a long night ahead of me anyway. At the hotel, I was just having it plain and it was way too sweet! You HAVE to dilute this with ice, or it becomes unbearably sweet. And yes, there is some caffeine in here, so I had a little trouble falling asleep (even though by that point, I was up for almost 22 hours).
CHICKEN N MEH
As much as I want to say that I didn’t get my hopes up for this place, I really can’t. Even though I don’t like Carolina BBQ, I was sort of being optimistic and thinking that the reason I didn’t like Carolina BBQ was because I never had it in Carolina. Well turns out, all those fakers… did a pretty good job! Really not a fan of anything in this place, down to their super sweet sweet tea. It’s filling and it’s cheap, I’ll give it that, though.