A Love Letter to a Legend: Bunn’s Barbecue Reopens For One Day
In Windsor, North Carolina, where Barbecue is more than food, it’s family, memory, and heritage, a quiet Saturday morning turned into something that felt more like a homecoming than a drive-thru line.
Folks started lining up before the sun had finished its coffee, with the first person getting in line at 6:30 AM. Nearly three hours later, the wait was finally over. At 9:40, twenty minutes ahead of schedule, the smell of wood smoke and vinegar lured the first car forward at Bunn’s Barbecue for its one-day-only reopening.
The line wrapped down King Street, curled onto Rascoe, and at its peak, stretched all the way toward York Street by Davis Ball Field. This wasn’t just a crowd, it was a testament. A living tribute to a barbecue joint that had been feeding Eastern North Carolina since 1938.
By 10:45 AM, the pound containers were nearly gone. By 10:58, the last of the hot ‘cue had been boxed and handed through the window. They switched to Sandwiches only, and folks ordered them by the dozens, they were flying out the door faster than they could be wrapped. Cash only, no frills, all flavor. The same way it’s always been. Just before Noon they were sold out.
This wasn’t just about chopped pork. This was about remembering who we are.
We talk a lot about preserving heritage, about holding on to what made Eastern North Carolina Eastern North Carolina. But Saturday proved it: barbecue isn’t fading quietly into history, it’s still got a heartbeat. One that echoes with every slaw-smothered sandwich passed down through the window and every whispered, “I used to come here with my granddaddy.”
Bunn’s may have closed its doors in 2023 after 85 faithful years, but for one day, Windsor remembered.
And while we’re losing more legacy pits than we’re gaining, there’s hope down the road, places like Old Colony Smokehouse in Edenton, keeping the whole hog tradition alive, and Honey Hog in Morganton, bringing it westward. That wasn’t just a drive-thru line on King Street.
That was 85 years of Windsor wrapped in butcher paper and tradition.
And for one beautiful morning, we got to taste it all over again.
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