College Bar-B-Que

College Bar-​B-​Que slow cooks BBQ the old fashioned way over wood. Their BBQ is moist and smokey and is great even with no sauce. Their sandwiches are overstuffed and the red slaw is fantastic as are the hushpuppies. They make a great foot long hot dog too. The wait staff is quick and friendly. This place hasn’t changed much over the last 40 years and that’s a great thing! It’s the one place I make sure to eat when I visit Salisbury.

BBQ cooked over smokey wood. Great slaw. Cheer wine on tap and great sweet tea. Hushpuppies are large and round. Great service. One of the best foot longs I’ve ever had. Got mine with slaw and chilli

The food is alway good here I eat here at least once a week The Bbq is very good best in Salisbury the fries are good and seasoned the tea is good

Really good BBQ and a really good place to eat. Renovated a couple years ago, it is VERY clean and a nice décor. They smoke their BBQ every day, and the value is very high.

Been eating here all my life, it’s one of our best bbq places in town. They are one of the few left still smoking their own meat.
Their bbq sandwiches are delicious and their hushpupoies are wonderful. Hush puppies are sold by the each, dont let that fool you though they are big fat and yummy.
I went today and got 6 bbq sandwiches, I had no problems except now I just have 2 sandwiches left…
Keep it up College BBQ!

the food was OK not great just Ok but the staff/​service. think «College»

One of the best breakfasts in Salisbury and their tea is top notch. Better than Cookout and McD’s.

Yummy always great BBQ and the best fries in Salisbury!
Favorites: BBQ sandwich, potato soup topped with bacon and cheddar,

Our review is a 3 ½, which Unilocal won’t allow.
We’re from out-​of-​town where BBQ has a completely different meaning, so we’ll try to evaluate from a local perspective.
BBQ is only pulled pork.
It has some smokiness to it, so it’s been cooked on a pit. All cuts are combined together.
This is vinegar country, so the sauce and slaw are heavily vinegar-​based, and that is the pre-​dominant flavor.
Potato soup was delicious; generous portions as it only comes in a large bowl.
Fabulous hushpuppies. (Thank the Lord, they don’t cook theirs with onions!!)
Crinkle French fries were fantastic – flavorful but not greasy.
Perfectly brewed unsweetened iced tea.
Superbly outstanding customer service – from the phone call, which didn’t even ring twice before being answered, to walking in the door. Kind, courteous waitstaff, and cooks obviously care about their jobs and the customers

Great burger joint. Extremely clean and friendly. Great deluxe cheeseburger. Great sanitation rating. I will definetly return!

Patron: «How are you doing today?»
Police officer: «Mighty fine thank you Joe.»
Toto, I’ve a feeling we’re not in Kansas anymore. College Bar-​B-​Que definitely has that small town Mayberry feel to it. It’s extra charming and inviting when you’re in town visiting from Atlanta, the least Southern and welcoming city South of the Mason Dixon line.
One of my best friends lives here, so I’ve been to Salisbury more times than I can count over the years. Lucky for me, we always go to College Bar-​B-​Que for breakfast before I head out of town. I have never actually had the barbeque here, so I cannot vouch for that but am a huge fan of their breakfast. The food and service are great, and just being here reminds you that there’s a lot to be said for small town living. The coffee is constantly refilled. You can get a veggie omelet, hash browns, and toast for a mere $ 5. It’s basically like a Waffle House breakfast, only not a grease-​fest like the WaHo. It may not be a fancy schmancy gourmet breakfast, but it’s certainly some tasty and delicious down home cooking. Consider me a fan.

I have been going here since the 70’s and I have enjoyed the barbecue but I am sorry they changed recipe or have started buying can chili and the footlong hot dogs are not as good as they used to be. For the barbecue to me it is very good and plenty of it. I go there whenever I am in Salisbury for either business or having to go to The VA Hospital. The waitresses are all ways friendly and smiling and what ever you are drinking they keep it full.

First-​time visitor, so will definitely come back to compare experiences. Found the BBQ to be tender with no flavor. But the excellent (Lex-​style) sauce is there on the table — load it up, and you’ve got a great sandwich. My big complaint here — and it’s big — is that the hushpuppies are too big. To get them cooked, they have a super-​thick exterior, which can taste burned, while the interior is barely cooked through. Batter tastes fine — why those big ol’ pups?
We came 20 minutes before closing time on a Saturday, and the place was packed with folks who are long-​time fans (servers knew many folks by name). Great vibe, good BBQ, nicely off the beaten path. Recommend.

As far as food goes, this place is just fine. Meat is tender and flavorful, hush puppies are not worth the calories. The big problem is the wait. It is usually full and takes forever to get your food. With kids this is disaster. The price is higher than places with much better food and wait time. At lunch it can be very difficult to get out of the parking lot because of the to go window line. I would go to Richard’s any day.

I was born and raised in Salisbury and have been eating here since I was a kid, and no I’m not going to tell you how long that is!
Pull up and you greeted by that wonderful smell of hickory smoke wafting from the chimney, which my wife says is my crack!
The ‘Q here is minced although when I make my own ‘Q at home a prefer pulled pork, but the mince is good not being to fine or chunky. The dip has just the right amount of heat and does’t interfere with the smoky taste of the pork. I also like when I get some of the extra crispy, extra smoky pieces of the outer skin mixed in with my ‘Q! The hushpuppies are good, but I prefer mine with just a hint of sweetness that these do not have. I also love the red slaw which is vinegar based and has just the right balance of vinegar and sweetness from the cabbage.
They have really good footlong hotdogs as well. I’m picky about my hotdog chili, but here its very good. I have never eaten breakfast here, but my wife has and she says for the money, its hard to beat.
Althought it looks the same inside as it did when it opened in 1964, a recent remodel has given it a fresh coat of paint, new table and counter tops, recovered booths, a new HVAC system and plumbing.
Kind of small inside, it can get very crowded at times. The service has always been very friendly and attentive. Keep in mind they close at 2 pm on Mondays and 3 pm Saturdays, which is kind of strange. The rest of the week, they are open untill 8pm.
When my wife and I know we are going to be in the area, eating at College BBQ is at the top of the list!

A solid Lexington style bbq joint. Breakfast, lunch or dinner, they do it well.
Their bbq is smoky and flavorful with red slaw on the side and white bread rolls. It is chopped finer than what you might find elsewhere in the area. Sauce is a vinegar base with a bit of spice. Hush puppies are good, but not the best in town. Making up for that are the foot long hot dog and burgers. And fountain cheerwine. Yum.
Breakfast may be my favorite meal here. Then again, I love crispy livermush covered in Texas Pete. If you’re not from the western piedmont, you may not know what that is. It’s similar to scrapple in Pennsylvania, just go ahead and give it a try. Omelets are massive and filled with whatever you’d like them to stuff in there. Hashbrowns are crunchy and similarly large. I like their home fries more, but often feel torn by the choice. You can’t beat their price on a two egg breakfast, either.

Yet another of the really solid Lexington/​Salisbury style BBQ restaurants in Salisbury, along with Hendrix, Wink’s, Rick’s, and Richard’s. And like the others this place serves three meals a day, and does a good job with each.
The barbecue here is moist, tender, and with some smokiness — they still cook with wood here. The sauce is the seemingly standard Salisbury version of the Lexington type sauce — much the same but with a little more zing. The chop here a bit finer than others in the area, and the barbecue is only lightly sauced out of the kitchen, but more is available, and probably is needed. Slaw and hush puppies are good, but not great.
The fries here are pretty good, and the foot long hot dog is very, very, nice. Frankly, I come here more often for the dog than I do the barbecue — the barbecue comes in to play when we’re doing a «BBQ Run» where we’ll stop at 3 or more restaurants on the same day, splitting a single sandwich at each, sometimes not completely finishing before moving on to the next. We’ll do the same with side, if they are really good ones, if not we pass. The Salisbury area BBQ restaurants lend themselves to this kind of pork raid.
While not a destination BBQ restaurant (not sure that any in Salisbury are that) but as a point of opportunity place, especially coupled with a good chili dog, this place will do very well.

Best breakfast in Salisbury. They will make any omelet you can describe. Not a real fan of the BBQ, but that is any NC BBQ. Excellent burgers fries.

Call it what ever you want … its not BBQ I do not care if its been there for 100 yrs

I’m a fan of the way they spell the name of the joint (Barbecue, though Unilocal currently spells it «Bar-​B-​Que»). According to shirts and other merchandise, they’ve been there since 1965. My wife says that’s probably accurate, and I try not to argue with her. Much.
When there’s a long-​time barbecue joint around, I figure it’s a good time to try it. The unfortunate thing, as near as I can tell, is that we stopped in fairly late in the day. While the service was friendly, and quick, the meat in the sandwich had seen better times.
I realize that the meat is going to end up in my stomach in a chomped-​up mess, but I like to bite into it and have a bit of (something) there. It was just nothing. It’s certainly possible that the meat never has much consistency, and is always a big mushy mess, and in that case, it won’t matter what time you go. But I’d like to see something else. The flavor is good, so if it would be more than mush, I think it would be nice.
The homemade sauce had a nice kick (and it was required, because the meat by itself had almost no flavor to it). Even the fries were pretty good. They also make their own Cherry-​Lemon Sun Drop, which was very tasty. It’s just that mush meat that was bad.