Restaurant Review: Gary's Bar-B-Q, China Grove, NC

On Saturday Sara and I ate at Gary's Bar-B-Q in China Grove, NC, which is northeast of Charlotte on US 29. According to the menu, it's been around since 1941, and occupies an old Gulf Oil service station. Here's the sign:



Here's a shot of part of the exterior:



The interior is decorated with antique tin advertisement signs, so many that it appears to be the Elephant's Graveyard of tin signs:





We both ordered pork plates; here's mine:



And here's Sara's:



There were two different barbecue sauces; one was a Lexington-style with vinegar, tomato and red pepper, the other was a tomato-based sauce similar to Kansas City-style sauces; this latter sauce, even though it was in a proprietary Gary's bottle, tasted very much like a commercial sauce.

The waitress was professional and attentive, keeping our drinks topped off and providing sample cups of Brunswick Stew and Banana Pudding, a nice touch not often seen in restaurants:

Brunswick Stew

Home-made Banana Pudding

The food was only average. The barbecue meat was flavorful and moist, and was the best part of the meal. Hush puppies were oversized spheres of dry cornmeal, basically inedible by my standards. French fries were freshly cooked crinkle cuts, standard for a BBQ place. They, too were rather bland, needing some seasoning to perk them up. The sample cup of Brunswick Stew was good; it's not offered as a substitute for fries or hush puppies, however. I'd think that the restaurant should be able to let you have the stew as a substitute for two other sides.

The sample cup of banana pudding was freshly made and good, although I'm not really a fan of that particular dessert.

Gary's has Cheerwine and Diet Cheerwine in addition to the usual soft drink offerings. Those are North Carolina soft drinks with a cherry flavor and color. I had the Diet Cheerwine.

For a rating I'd have to split food and service for Gary's; the service was better than the food, qualifying as good to excellent, while the food qualified only as average: 3 out of 5: average; reasonably good food, moderate effort by staff/management. So 3/5 on the food and 4/5 on the service.

We noticed that in that China Grove/Salisbury/Granite Quarry area, there were many restaurants advertising barbecue, so we'll be up again in that area in the future.