NC: Wilber’s Barbecue

Via Cousin John

Wilber Shirley is committed to the tradition of cooking whole hogs entirely over hardwood coals.

Wilber’s is one of the biggest names in barbecue in eastern North Carolina. Unlike a few other famous places in the Coastal Plain, this is a restaurant where the name above the door still means exactly what it did when Wilber Shirley bought the former Hill’s Barbecue and opened it under his own name in 1962.

Wilber’s is one of only a handful of remaining restaurants anywhere in the eastern part of the state where barbecue is cooked entirely over hardwood coals. Many other places still trade on the names and reputations of men who took the trouble to cook barbecue the old, slow way — the way it was meant to be cooked — but behind the scenes, their owners have quietly gotten rid of the wood, the pits, the smoke, the shovels, and the mess of pit cooking. Not Wilber. He points out that tradition comes with a hefty price tag, a fact he knows well, since his crew cuts and splits wood year-round.

But he says, “I think the finished product is worth the effort. I think that I’ve been successful with it, and I firmly believe that’s the way to cook it.”

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