Our Story
A Family Smokehouse
in the Smoky Mountains
The Beasleys have been cooking barbecue a lot longer than we have been selling it. What started
in a Florida backyard with smoked mullet turned into a smokehouse in South Georgia, and then into three of them in
the mountains of Western North Carolina.
The Beasley family. Joe, Will, R.J., and Wyatt.
Where It Started
Joe Beasley grew up in Florida, cooking from the time he was eight or nine years old. It started
with smoked mullet, the way a lot of Florida cooking does, and it never stopped. He told his friends in college he
was going to open a barbecue place someday. It took a while, but he meant it.
The family opened its first smokehouse in South Georgia in 2010, a place where almost nobody had
heard of brisket yet. They put it on the map down there. Waynesville came in 2013, Dillsboro in 2015, and Franklin
joined the family after that.
Why We Call It a Smokehouse
It was a deliberate choice, not a name we picked because it sounded good. Smoking and barbecue
are not the same thing. Smoking is low and slow, around 250 to 275 degrees or below, held there for hours.
Barbecue runs hotter and faster.
Calling ourselves a smokehouse also left room for everything a smokehouse could someday do.
Sides of salmon. Cured bacons. The traditional things that come out of a real smokehouse and not just off a pit.
We are not doing any of that today. But we named the place for where it could go, not just where it started.
How We Cook
The old-fashioned way, which is the hard way. Low and slow over real hickory, every day, at all
three locations. Nothing precooked and rewarmed. Nothing brought in already smoked from somewhere else. Every meat
we serve comes out of our own smokers.
Our meats are not cooked by time. They are cooked by temperature.
All of our meats are probe cooked. A smoker has hot spots and cool spots, so a rack that is
ready on one side may need another hour on the other. We treat every single piece on its own and pull it when it
is right, not when a timer says so. Ribs and chicken go on twice a day so what you get has not been sitting.
Everything is dry rubbed and comes to the table unsauced. The only exception is our baby back
ribs, which get sauced after smoking, never before. If meat is cooked right, it does not need sauce to hide
anything. What goes on it is your call.
Why the Menu Runs Everywhere
People ask why a North Carolina smokehouse serves Texas brisket. The answer is geography.
Western North Carolina sits at the crossroads of every great barbecue region in the country. We are not far from
Texas, not far from Kansas City and St. Louis, not far from South Georgia, and right next door to Eastern
Carolina.
So we went and learned the best of each one and brought it home. Texas brisket. Deep southern
and Carolina pork. St. Louis and Memphis dry rubbed ribs. Eight house sauces that run all the way from Eastern
Carolina vinegar through Piedmont ketchup and the mustard sauces to the sweeter Kansas City and Texas styles.
Wherever we thought it was best is where we learned it.
What Comes With It
The sides are not an afterthought around here. There is pork in the green beans and the collard
greens, and brisket burnt ends in the baked beans. Nana's Creamy Coleslaw is Joe's great grandmother's recipe,
four generations old and still made the way she made it.
Our fries go in pure beef tallow, the old school way, and tallow is the only fat in our fryers.
Two house rubs, one built for beef with no sugar in it and one for pork with a touch of sweet. Everything made
here, the way we would make it at home.
The Next Generation
R.J., Will, and Wyatt Beasley have been in this since the beginning, cooking barbecue since they
were big enough to stand up and open a smoker lid. Today R.J. runs Waynesville and Wyatt and Will run Dillsboro,
and all of them float between stores depending on where the day needs them.
Waynesville and Dillsboro are family run. Mike and Justin Hunt own and operate our Franklin
location. Same recipes, same smokehouse, same standards.
Where It Has Landed Us
We have never chased a list. But Yelp ranked us No. 1 for brisket in the U.S. and Canada,
TripAdvisor named us one of the Top 25 Hidden Gem Restaurants in the country, and Yelp put us at No. 11 on its Top
100 U.S. Restaurants. See every award, or
read the questions we get asked most.
