DECATUR, Ga. – The smell is the first thing that hits you when you enter the City Barbeque location on Blackmon Dr. in Decatur. The restaurant’s open kitchen model allows customers to not only smell the freshly made barbecue brisket, pork, and chicken being made, but see it, too.
On Friday, the day after Halloween, the store was buzzing with the activity of a lunch rush, but the line was moving fast. A day earlier the staff, some of whom have been there since the location opened in 2018, saw its largest catering order come in. It was for a 200-person Halloween wedding, remembered Graig Rogers, the general manager.
“It’s been very busy,” Rogers said. “We make everything in-house.”
The City Barbeque menu has traditional barbecue favorites like smoked turkey, smoked chicken wings, and pulled pork, but there are also City Barbeque specialty items like the Dirty Bird, a chicken sandwich that is served with bacon and all the fixins’ that we tried and the Triple Que Tacos, that we also tried. The Tripler Que Tacos combine brisket, pulled pork, and ribs with a chipotle peach dressing that helped the flavors of the meat mix quite well.
Like any barbecue place worth its weight, the sides are crucial to a complete meal and City Barbeque’s house-made daily sides are worth a trip to one of the eight Georgia locations in metro Atlanta, including in Buford, Johns Creek, McDonough, Sandy Springs, Snellville, and Woodstock. An Acworth location is scheduled to open in early 2025, according to Rogers.
The potato salad and hush puppies alone are worth a visit in my opinion. Both are made fresh daily, according to Rogers, and they tasted like it was made only a few minutes before I tried them. The banana pudding, another staple on the menu at City Barbeque, is also made daily and was the best store-bought banana pudding I have ever had. In all seriousness, I’d made the 18-mile drive from my home to City Barbeque just for the banana pudding.
The peach cobbler and triple chocolate cake are also must-try desserts on the menu.
The Atlanta Voice was allowed a look at the smokers inside the kitchen at the Decatur location. The brisket and ribs are smoked for hours on end at City Barbeque and the tenderness and easy-eating of the brisket, which can come in a sandwich or on a plate, is proof positive of why the lines at City Barbeque were so consistent while we were there.
A large part of the popularity, besides the food, is the business’ catering arm, said Rogers. More than 75% of the business comes via catering and whether for a large wedding or for community events, such as Atlanta Falcons tailgate events or college football games, City Barbeque’s staff is always ready for a big order.
“It’s something we are passionate about,” Rogers said of community events that City Barbeque participates in. “We serve barbeque, we are a local restaurant, but we want to also make the community better.”
