Barbecue takes its time, but your lunch window does not.
This North Carolina smokehouse cooks fresh for the day, then serves until the food is gone. On some days, that can happen surprisingly early, which makes arrival time part of the meal whether you planned for it or not.
Doors open at 11 a.m. Wednesday through Saturday, but the posted closing hour only helps if the kitchen still has something left to serve.
Whole-hog barbecue, brisket, ribs, sausage, scratch-made sides, and desserts give the counter plenty of reasons to move fast once lunch starts.
If I were planning the stop, I would not gamble on a late arrival.
Here, waiting too long can turn brisket into a missed opportunity.
Getting There Early Gives You The Widest Choice
Old Colony Smokehouse does not treat “sold out” as a dramatic warning. It is simply how the daily cooking schedule works.
The restaurant prepares food fresh for that day’s service and does not rely on reheated leftovers from the previous day.
The available menu can narrow quickly, with some days ending in a complete sellout around 1:30 p.m. and other days stretching later into the afternoon.
That means arriving near opening is less about beating a crowd and more about seeing the full range of what was cooked.
Since individual meats can disappear at different times, an early arrival also gives you more flexibility when deciding between pork, brisket, ribs, sausage, or a combination plate.
The restaurant currently opens at 11 a.m. Wednesday through Saturday. Wednesday through Friday service runs until 6 p.m., while Saturday is scheduled until 3 p.m., with food availability determining whether the full menu lasts that long.
Preordering is also available online for drive-through pickup, giving you another way to plan around a specific order.
Old Colony Smokehouse is located at 809 N Broad St, Edenton, NC 27932.
There are plenty of restaurants where showing up late only changes the size of the line.
Here, it can change the menu.
Whole-Hog Barbecue Keeps Eastern North Carolina On The Counter
Whole-hog barbecue belongs naturally in this part of North Carolina, and Old Colony keeps it among its everyday meats.
The current menu offers whole-hog barbecue as a plate, sandwich, family dinner, and by the pound. Crispy whole-hog skins are available separately, giving the pork an extra textural option without changing the basic barbecue itself.
The restaurant’s broader cooking style stays tied to traditional live-fire methods. Meats are smoked for hours over locally sourced hardwoods, without gas or electric assistance.
That matters for the pork because the process begins long before it reaches the cutting counter. Time over wood builds the flavor, while the market-style service lets the meat cutter portion each order when you reach the front.
Old Colony also keeps sauces separate rather than burying the meat under them. The restaurant’s meats are seasoned, lightly dressed, and served unsauced so diners can add sauce according to preference.
The whole-hog barbecue sits comfortably beside brisket, ribs, chicken, and sausage without losing its Eastern North Carolina identity.
Plates come with two sides and cornbread, while sandwiches and larger take-home options give the same pork several different jobs on the menu.
A menu this broad could easily forget where it lives. This one still remembers.
Brisket Brings Texas Technique Into Edenton
Brisket may have Texas credentials, but Old Colony gives it a permanent place in Edenton.
PBS NC documented the restaurant using prime-grade briskets, with Adam Hughes explaining that sourcing them in eastern North Carolina takes extra effort.
The current menu still lists beef brisket as an everyday meat, along with chopped brisket plates and brisket sandwiches.
The cooking stays simple in concept and demanding in practice. Briskets spend hours over hardwood until bark develops on the exterior and the interior reaches the texture needed for slicing.
The restaurant also serves brisket in other forms. Chopped brisket can anchor a plate, while ground brisket chili appears on the Carolina Dog.
That gives beef almost as much room to maneuver as pork.
The contrast is part of the fun. Whole-hog barbecue carries the local North Carolina tradition, while brisket brings a different regional barbecue language to the same counter.
Old Colony does not force you to choose sides in that argument.
It simply gives both meats a place on the tray.
Ribs, Sausage, And The Carolina Twinkie Keep The Menu Moving
A barbecue counter gets much harder to navigate when everything sounds like a reasonable second choice.
Pork spare ribs are part of the everyday lineup, available as plates, baskets, half racks, full racks, and family dinners. Jalapeño-cheddar sausage is equally flexible, showing up as a link, plate, sandwich, and basket.
The sausage also carries a family connection. Adam Hughes grew up around sausage making in his grandparents’ butcher shop, and his family made the jalapeño-cheddar style he serves today.
Then the menu takes a stranger turn.
The Carolina Twinkie combines jalapeño, pimento cheese, sausage, and bacon into one smoked item. It remains listed among the restaurant’s current specials.
That gives the counter three very different directions.
Ribs keep things classic. Sausage connects the menu to Hughes’ butcher-shop background. The Carolina Twinkie takes those same smoky, savory ingredients and turns them into something that sounds like barbecue decided to invent its own snack category.
The name may be playful. The ingredients are doing serious work.
Locally Sourced Hardwood Powers The Smoking
The fire is not decorative at Old Colony Smokehouse.
The restaurant’s meats are smoked for hours over locally sourced hardwoods with no gas or electric fuel helping the process.
That wood fuels the main proteins across the menu, including brisket, ribs, pork, chicken, and sausage.
Cooking this way requires managing the fire rather than setting a machine and forgetting it. Heat, airflow, smoke, and timing all become part of the job, especially when several cuts with different cooking needs share the same day’s production.
The result is a restaurant schedule built around what the smokers can realistically produce.
That helps explain the sellout model. Old Colony prepares enough sides and desserts to accompany the amount of meat cooked for the day rather than extending service with reheated food.
The philosophy keeps the entire operation tied to the smoker’s pace.
Customers may be watching the clock. The meat already spent hours doing exactly that.
Scratch-Made Sides And Desserts Follow The Same Daily Routine
The smoker gets most of the attention, but the side counter is not built from shortcuts.
Sides and desserts are made from scratch, with quantities prepared to match the day’s meat supply.
The menu includes collard greens, Carolina sweet slaw, mac and cheese, loaded potato salad, broccoli salad, green beans, cucumber salad, pickled beets, fries, and smokehouse beans.
That gives a barbecue plate plenty of ways to lean heavy, bright, creamy, or tangy.
The smokehouse beans push especially far beyond a plain pot of beans. There is a version built with meat trimmings, roasted peppers and onions, fruit, and smoke.
Dessert continues the same handmade approach.
The current ordering menu lists banana pudding, key lime pie, buttermilk chocolate cake, Mississippi mud pie, cheesecakes, and other rotating sweets.
The exact dessert board can change, which suits a restaurant already organized around daily preparation and limited quantities.
A tray can begin with brisket and collards, detour through mac and cheese, and still end with banana pudding.
At that point, calling it a “side trip” would be underselling the itinerary.
Adam Hughes Brings Butcher-Shop Roots And Competition Experience
Old Colony Smokehouse is built around Adam Hughes’ long relationship with meat, fire, and barbecue.
Hughes is a third-generation butcher and sausage maker who grew up in rural Bertie County. His grandparents operated a butcher shop for more than three decades, his grandfather raised hogs, and his grandmother was known in the family for sausage making.
He later developed his live-fire cooking skills while attending East Carolina University and moved into competitive barbecue.
His résumé includes certification as a barbecue judge, a world championship, state championships, and a win on Food Network’s “Chopped.” He gained awards for chicken, ribs, pork, brisket, sides, and desserts.
The restaurant turns that background into a market-style setup.
You order at the counter, where smoked meats are cut fresh, then choose scratch-made sides before finding a seat inside or on the covered patio.
It is a straightforward system for food that took anything but a straightforward amount of time to prepare.
Old Colony Smokehouse may open at 11, but the real work started long before the front door did.