A Review: Jacksonville’s Jailhouse Bar-B-Q
by Thomas Brock - February 24th, 2008.Filed under: BrockNet Seal of Approval, Food Blogging, Jacksonville, NC, Onslow County, NC, Restaurants.
Friday night I had dinner at the Jailhouse Bar-B-Q restaurant in Jacksonville. The Jailhouse is named such because it’s home is the former Onslow County Jail. The restaurant still has that feeling of imprisonment, but not nearly the negative connotation…More like a prisoner in a barbeque’ed paradise!
I had the ribs and BBQ dinner with cucumber salad and Cole slaw with iced sweet tea to drink.
The ribs were, without a doubt, the best I’ve ever eaten, including some bbq’ed ribs from the Kansas City area. The meat separated from the bones and sinewy connective tissue easily and was cooked through perfectly and the sauce was tangy and sweet. The ribs were so good, in fact, I may have disproved this professor.
The barbeque is the classic Eastern Carolina-style: Full of tangy vinegary goodness. The cucumber salad was sweet (tomatoes!) and tangy (vinegar!!) and was really good. The Cole slaw was also very good.
After talking to the “inmate” (the server), I found out that the restaurant makes most everything in-house. Nearly everything (sauce, rub, BBQ, Cole slaw, the cucumber salad, the tea, etc) is made in the back of the restaurant by the loving hands of the head cook, who visited our table to make sure all was well. It was. Oh, my, it was.
I proudly present Jailhouse Bar-B-Q the BrockNet Seal of Approval for its great food, great service, and fun atmosphere. I will definitely be a return customer.
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February 26th, 2008 at 9:45 am
Y’all can keep your “sweet tea.” That stuff’s just nasty - like drinking sugar water.
February 26th, 2008 at 10:01 am
Oh, bollocks.
Sweet tea would be a gift from the gods…If there were any…Gods, that is.
February 26th, 2008 at 10:13 am
It’s hummingbird food. Not fit for human consumption.
February 26th, 2008 at 10:15 am
Bollocks again.
If it’s good enough for the birds, why wouldn’t it be good enough for us?
February 26th, 2008 at 10:53 am
Tea is meant to taste like tea. If I want sugar water, I’ll drink sugar water.
May 14th, 2008 at 9:05 pm
Mr. Brock,
I appreciate the picture and compliments. I am glad that you enjoyed the meal. We pride ourselves on the Carolina style Bar-B-Q. If you get the chance we would love to see back again. I hope you get the chance to try our chocolate cream pie and our smoked chicken “carolina style ” of course.
Just a note of history. The building you eat in was the dorm for the inmates. This was the Onslow County Jail from 1934 until 1959. The jail included 1100 acres of farm with minimum and maximun security inmates.
The past history of this building includes many other restaurants. When we decided to open, my wife and I felt it was important to recognize the roll this building played in local history even though you will find very little in the records about it.
Please come again and bring your friends.
Thanks
Rick
Head Cook and Owner
May 15th, 2008 at 7:59 pm
Mr. Murray,
Thank you for visiting! I’ve been to the Jailhouse once since this review was written and enjoyed the meal just as much.
Next time I’m there, I’ll definitely try the chocolate pie. It sounds good!
Thanks again for your visit to my blog.
June 5th, 2008 at 10:04 pm
My family just tried Jailhouse BBQ for the first time this evening. We ordered two large rib dinners. They came with two sides for $17.99. For the price, I assumed that I was getting baby backs. What was brought out was a half rack of spare ribs. There was decent flavor, but the meat was dry and almost mushy. I didn’t pick up any smoke flavor at all. The sauce was a good Eastern Carolina sauce.
For our sides, we had beets, potato salad, beans and french fries. They were all ok. I think the potato salad was my least favorite.
The sweet tea was very good. Sweet enough to use as pancake syrup… just the way I like it!
Finally, our service was good and the atmosphere was nice. I would visit again to try the bbq sandwich. Having eaten at several award winning bbq restaurants in the past, I would say there is potential for Jailhouse to be a fun place with good food.
July 10th, 2008 at 3:09 pm
Drove past the Jailhouse yesterday and saw no cars. Went through the parking lot and saw signs on the door that said, “Thanks for Your Patronage…Closed for Business”. I thought that maybe they had a private party later on in the evening and the sign probably didn’t relay that message very well. Being the curious creature I am I went back about 7:30 pm to find no cars or electricity. I guess the place is closed.
Now with that bit of information out of the way I’ll give you my review of the place on the only visit I made there.
My fiance and I stopped by after stumbling upon the place about two months ago. She had BBQ Pork and Chicken while I had BBQ Pork and Ribs. I’m an Eastern North Carolina native and I know good BBQ. What we got WAS NOT good BBQ. Everything we ate was a uniform brown color and absolutely nothing had any hint of smoke flavor to it. THEY CAN NOT IN ANY WAY BE COOKING WITH SMOKE…I don’t care what anyone says. No smoke ring + no smoke flavor = you ain’t cookin’ with smoke!
The meat we got was somewhat dry. The BBQ Pork as well as my ribs were somewhat mushy. None of the meat had flavor on it’s own. There was no seasoning on any of the protein we had on our plates. Look…if you’re not going to cook BBQ with smoke you at least need to season your meat people! This stuff had no flavor at all…NONE!
Vegetables. The best I can remember…they didn’t have any seasoning either.
Service was good, but that’s about the only positive this place had.
It’s no wonder their doors are closed. If you serve good food and have good service, you’ll likely have a successful restaurant…but you can’t have good service and bad food and expect to make it.
I would have never gone back to the Jailhouse BBQ, but now it seems I won’t have to.
Now if someone who knew how to cook BBQ were to go re-open the place, I think it’s in a decent location and has a nice “BBQ” atmosphere. I like the name and the history behind the building. It’s a shame someone went in there and made such a mess of the place. A bad aura is hard to get rid of.
July 10th, 2008 at 3:19 pm
Off topic…and in reply to “Bobby” above:
I don’t mind eating baby back ribs, but given my rathers I’d choose the spare rib just as the Jailhouse did. Baby backs, in my opinion, are a bit foo-foo and not great BBQ fodder. Spare ribs have more meat and to me just taste better.
Baby backs tend to be a bit more expensive…and in that sense you are right on…for the price you paid you probably wouldn’t expect to be getting spare ribs.
But at the end of the day…nearly everything you BBQ is gonna be good. But you have to cook it properly, with the proper seasonings, and with the proper equipment. You simply can not roast (or boil as I suspect is the treatment the mushy ribs at the Jailhouse received) unseasoned meat and expect people to come back for more.
When people say your food was finger licking good you can take it as a huge compliment. When I left the Jailhouse all I wanted to do was thoroughly wash my hand and brush my teeth.