Sooey’s BBQ & Rib Shack

Dog friendly! Came here for lunch midweek so was quiet but service was great and so was the food. Hush puppies with the honey butter was yum! Husband loved his ribs and shrimp platter… which was ginormous. My southern chicken was good as well. Overall highly recommend.

Good bbq, got the pulled pork and southern fried chicken combo with hush puppies, Cole slaw and baked beans. Fried chicken was terrific, especially with the chili flake vinegar sauce they have. Pulled pork was good. Has chili flakes in it so heads up. The hotter the better for me. Bbq sauce was ok, was hoping for more of a carolina style bbq sauce but they do have the vinegar sauce if you want to mix it up. Hush puppies were good, Cole slaw I liked alot, and baked beans were also good. So far the 3^rd bbq I’ve had in the outer banks and this has been the best. Last two places were pigmans bbq and high cotton. Good job. See you again soon.

Terrible. We ate at 5pm. Terrible service, food from the night before. 1^st & last time. I’ll never eat there again. Worst ribs ever! I mean ever.

Without a doubt, the worst BBQ I have ever tasted. Terrible is too good a rating. Portions are large but the ribs were basically inedible. Arriving in a sea of grease, the ribs were absolutely appalling. The only good thing about the meal was the ice tea. Don’t go on a bet.

Like stated several times already, the hushpuppies are some of the best I have ever had. I also had the two piece fried chicken which was just a tad overcooked to me but the mac and cheese and SWEET tea made up for it.

Sooey’s has become a tradition on the yearly trip to the OBX. So much so that’s it’s hard to start some where in explaining why. It’s a great restaurant on so many levels.
I’ve been here a few times but it wasn’t until the last time that I tried their sweet tea. It is absolutely out of this world. It’s so refreshing on a humid evening. I guess it’s part of the southern experience? Or is that sitting on someone’s porch while drinking it? Either way, it’s a win in my book.
My favorite part is the rooftop deck. They are extremely dog friendly and always talk to our dog. They don’t mind dogs on the deck at all! If you go to the side of the deck, you can watch the sun set over Tattooine (see my pic). Where did the other sun go?! But seriously, «Tattoine» is the largest sand dune on the east coast and is a great sight from Sooey’s deck!
The ribs and brisket here are absolutely amazing. Every time I come down, I try to go to different BBQ places to see what else there is. It’s so hard with an ace in the hole like this place and High Cotton. I may have to resign the quest and name one of them number one. It’s so hard but so delicious! Must persevere…
If you are any where near this establishment, go in and treat yourself!

Informal and helpful wait staff made for a great evening. Great wings as a special followed by great pulled pork. Good food and portions for a reasonable price.

Great BBQ, nice service, decent prices. Stop by this place if you’re new to the area and want some good southern cooking or just some BBQ. The food here is so damn good, finger licking good.

Absolutely the best BBQ on the Outer Banks hands downs. Great prices, friendly staff, AWESOME FOOD! You can carve your name in the table tops. Grimy, but cool to see. Found our spot in the corner. Super fast too. We love BBQ and have tried everything from vinegar based (my favorite) to sauce smothered (not true BBQ). Amazing collards too!

There’s places you just crave and this was one for me. I don’t understand all the bad reviews of this place. They were so nice and friendly, laid back and not overly crowded. Came here on vacation and got the pulled pork sandwich with hush puppies. Their hush puppies are out of this world. Their pork was so tender and their vinegar bbq sauce was amazing. Loved it. Looking forward to coming back.

I really wanted to like this place. It smelled awesome outside when I parked.
I asked the kid inside «what’s the best?» He didn’t hesitate to tell me the brisket. So I ordered a brisket platter with two sides.
Ughhhh. The brisket was tough and leathery. Nothing tender or juicy about it. It was also swimming in sauce, presumably to make the leather brisket a little more mushy.
From my view of the kitchen, they use barbecue sauce right off the back of their food truck. No magic recipes here, as I watched the sauce get poured straight from a wholesaler’s plastic bottle.
My mac and cheese and baked bean sides don’t even provoke a memory of any sort an hour later. I suppose they weren’t horrible. But life will be just fine if I never eat them again.
I really wanted to like this place. I’m a tough reviewer. Others may have given it three stars. But all of us agreed they should be embarrassed to have served such tough, dried-​out brisket. Especially when you claim it’s the best thing on the menu. I have to wonder how much worse the other items might be?

Had the Sooey’s sampler and was impressed with all their different BBQs. The atmosphere was great and being located right next to Jockey’s Ridge was nice because I was able to walk to the sand dunes with my two kids and see the sunset after we finished dinner.

Let’s start with the positives: nice view of Jockey’s Ridge, friendly/​prompt service, decent live music, good hush puppies, collards, and fried okra.
The bad news is the rest is disappointing. Dried out over cooked ribs, overly sour example of Eastern Carolina vinegar sauce on the pulled pork, mac n cheese that is dangerously similar to Velveeta, and soggy fries. We ended up binning ¾ of the meal and had to apologize to our Yankee guests for the poor example of Eastern Carolina BBQ. And the restrooms were not quite as nice as a gas station’s.

There is just nothing worse than getting a bad meal on vacation, amiright?
I so wanted some good southern BBQ and this seemed like just the place. I wish we had listened to our instincts when even the ordering process indicated that this was just not going to be a good visit. For example, my wife asked for a fruit punch, which is on the menu, and I asked for a root beer, also on the menu, but we were told they were out. So we asked if they had hush puppies and the waiter had the nerve to say «Is it on the menu?» to which my wife said, well so was fruit punch and he said «yeah you got me there». Then also proceeded to diss my wife for ordering a burger at «the best BBQ on the beach» — his words.
We shook that off and I ordered the fried chicken and pulled pork combo. More people came in after us and I heard them order the same so I was hoping I got something good.
When the food arrived there was no fried chicken, just the pulled pork. I asked the waiter where my fried chicken was and he acted like I never ordered that. How do you not hear the words COMBO and FRIED CHICKEN? But wouldn’t you know he did the SAME THING to the people next to us too!
I told him just to forget the chicken, however, after I tasted the pulled pork… if you can even really call it that.
It seriously tasted like a mix of sloughed off pork fat soup with chunks of low quality overcooked «meat» in it and I could not even eat half of it.
My wife’s burger was mediocre and was quite obviously just a frozen patty from a restaurant supply place which is understandable at a BBQ restaurant, however it was better than my BBQ so go figure!
I am sure there are some who can come here and see absolutely nothing wrong. Good for them! I’m glad not everyone is wasting a perfectly good meal on vacation but when you spend 2 weeks driving up the Atlantic coast and have amazing meals along most of the trip then it really sticks out when a place fails so miserably and I had to at least let others know.
I will say I’m not a huge fan of NC BBQ anyway so if you absolutely love NC style, you can chalk up this review to that and ignore this completely… But if you’ve never had real NC style BBQ I’d advise against this place being your first taste of it.

Disappointed tonight in the size of the pork platter. A lot different than past summers. We were told this was now the amount they put in the platter. Small 6oz side dish container, not even all the way full. No hush puppies either. Manager said she would give us more if we drove back to the restaurant but only because I was asking and not because it was wrong. So if you’re used to getting enough for 2 adults worth of meat in your Sooey’s platters I guess that’s not the way they do it anymore.
Still the same delicious family recipes. Everything else was great and the same as always.

It’s a very chill place and nice to go with the family. The outdoor seating upstairs has a nice view of Jockey’s Ridge State Park. The hush puppies were delicious. My chicken fingers were very appetizing and the Mac and cheese was, oh so good, however the food did take a while to come out considering it wasn’t very crowded at the time we were there. The food was decent and the décor was pretty standard for a BBQ joint.

We pretty much focused on seafood on this trip to the Outer Banks and did not get to High Cotton. Since we mismanaged our restaurant plans we ended up at Sooey’s for lunch on Sunday, High Cotton being closed. Both offer AAdvantage dining participation. We had never been to Sooey’s.
They open at 11:00 am on Sunday and when we arrived at 11:30 there was no one there when other places we drove by were packed. That probably was trying to tell us something. While we were there, one person came in for carryout and that was it.
I ordered barbecue and a ¼ rack dinner with slaw and collards. Ms T ordered a pulled chicken sandwich and a side of fried okra.
The best first, the barbecue. They advertise it as «hand-​pulled». What does that mean? Do some places have machines to do the pulling? The use of the term «pulled» in eastern North Carolina bothers me because it conjures visions of mediocre mid-​western pulled pork I usually get. However, when it was delivered, it was Eastern NC style, not pulled in big hunks, but chopped the way I like it. It was decent, a little spicy, with visible crushed red chile and black pepper. I would rate this in the three star range and would certainly order it as a sandwich, so I asked for and received a bun. I ate it with some slaw. It was really a little better than I expected and I would go back for a barbecue dinner or sandwich.
It kind of went downhill from here. The slaw was way overdressed, too sweet with not enough vinegar to balance it out. It was fresh but appeared to be bag mix, because of the blend of carrot and purple cabbage and the style of cut. I made it work with a dose of Texas Pete.
The collards were OK, tender enough but pretty much unchopped. Some of the leaves were huge, nearly whole. It is the first time I have had to use a knife and fork to eat collards. It tasted fine with the barbecue and mercifully was not sweetened. The okra looked like pre-​breaded commercial stuff with a very heavy breading. It was tasteless, no salt. The hushpuppies were made with one ingredient, onion.
The pulled chicken sandwich was a poor offering. It appeared to be either roast or poached chicken breast, shredded into strings and drowned in a sweet red sauce. In my book, barbecue is a process or a method of cooking, not the application of sauce. Martin Sheen said it in Apocolypse Now, «I don’t see any method at all, Sir», when it comes to this chicken. It does not get much worse or more amateur than this. To top it off, the chicken was stale. We expected chicken out of a smoker, smoky, juicy and pink; pulled apart with a mix of dark and white meat.
The ribs were just as bad as the pulled chicken. These never saw a smoker. They were baked or cooked in a crock pot or electric roaster. They come across as stewed. They were cooked to mush and were devoid of smoke, then sauce was ladled on top. They were also a little stale. This was the second time this trip with the crock pot ribs. Is this a NC thing? I simply don’t know. I come here for the Eastern chop so usually don’t get ribs.
On the plus side, we had a really nice lady taking care of us. I felt sorry for her having to serve some of this. If I return it will be alone and for a barbecue sandwich. Ms T won’t even let me drive by the place again so now how am I going to drive back to RDU? Or maybe I would try their fried chicken.

Pork — 3 stars
Ribs — ½ star
Pulled Chicken — ½ star
Slaw — 2−½ stars
Collards — 2−½ stars
Okra — 2 stars

Winner Winner Chicken Dinner!
The fried chicken breast is one of the best I have had EVER! So juicy and the skin is spiced just right! I got collards (because, why not? It’s the south!) and they were actually quite delicious. The hush puppies were by far my favorite side item though! I had to get a basket to go! My boyfriend got the «famous» pulled pork sandwich and that was great as well! Overall, this was a great find and we will definitely be back again next time in OBX!

Not sure why Sooey’s reviews aren’t better because our experience was pretty great! We had 36 people so we ordered some catering platters to go.
For sides we got: green beans, Mac and cheese, potato salad, hush puppies, and coleslaw. The hush puppies were probably the consensus favorite and most memorable of the sides we tried. In addition, I only tried the coleslaw and Mac and cheese which were both tasty.
For entrees we got racks of ribs, pulled pork, fried chicken and pulled chicken. The pulled chicken was ok but no one was blown away by it. The pulled pork and ribs were definitely much better so we would skip the pulled chicken next time.
Overall, everyone enjoyed their meal and found it to be a satisfying experience which is hard for a party of 36. We did have to order quite a bit of food since the sides and pulled pork came in pint sized containers. The hush puppies are a can’t miss side for sure!

This place has a bad rep, but I thought it was fun and delicious.
NC Pork BBQ sandwich was delicious, came with two sides, and a special vinegar sauce on top.
I’d go back and don’t know what all the hate is about.