Archibald’s BBQ has been a beacon for barbecue enthusiasts for more to sixty years. Customers line up every day on a pilgrimage to the modest cinderblock building off Martin Luther King Boulevard in Northport.
It’s lunchtime at Alabama’s venerable Archibald’s BBQ in Northport, just across the Black Warrior River from Tuscaloosa. Hickory wood crackles and pops in the pit, and a plume of smoke billows from the chimney.
Don Mills, who’s in town from Fairhope, steps up to the counter and orders a pork sandwich.
“We come here every time we come to Tuscaloosa,” Mills says. “Yeah, it’s our go-to barbecue joint.”
Mills, a Tuscaloosa native, considers himself an Archibald’s fan from way back.
“We’ve been coming here since almost the time they opened,” he says. “It didn’t take us long to discover this place because we could just smell that hickory smoke just drifting over. So, we had to track it down.”
The late George and Betty Archibald started their business in 1962 in a white cinderblock shack that sat alongside their red-brick house off what is now Martin Luther King Boulevard in Northport. George cooked the ribs and Betty made the sauce.
Woodrow Washington III, their grandson, says George and Betty wanted to build something for their family.
“Just like, I’m gonna say, any young entrepreneurs, (they) just want(ed) to make something for their family and hopefully have a legacy to leave behind, and they just decided that they was going to open it up,” he says.
These days, Woodrow runs the family business along with his brother, Tray Washington, and sister, Lashawn Washington Humphrey.
Woodrow takes us inside George and Betty’s old house, just a few feet away the rib joint. It’s now home to the business operations for Archibald’s BBQ, and George and Betty’s old bedroom is now Woodrow’s personal office.
“This is my grandmother and grandfather's bedroom right here that we’re in, and she sat in this chair where I sit at now and looked out the window when she couldn't work anymore,” he says.
“If somebody wanted to see my grandmother, they’d knock on the window, and she'd open the window up and talk to ’em.”
Woodrow was about 10 years old when his grandfather put him to work chopping wood.
“We'd unload it off the truck and we’d work right outside, busting wood with sledgehammers, axes and wedges,” he recalls. “And we were seeing who can bust the wood the quickest.”
Their reward for all that hard work?
“Man, we really thought we was getting paid, but we really got a pork sandwich with some chips and a Grapico drink,” Woodrow says. “So that was our pay. We might get a couple of dollars if we was lucky, but, you know, that was just part of it.”
George Archibald Sr. died in 1985, but his son George Jr., and his daughter, Paulette Washington, kept the fires burning. Their hard work helped make Archibald’s one of Alabama’s most iconic barbecue joints.
Now, Paulette’s children – Woodrow, Tray and Lashawn -- are the keepers of the Archibald’s flame.
The original business in Northport has grown and spread to include an Archibald & Woodrow’s BBQs in Tuscaloosa and another in Birmingham. The Washington’s also run a food truck and catering business.
Woodrow says his mom still has a hand in things.
“So, she's in the 70s now, but she handles like paying the bills and stuff like that,” he says. “Give her something to do and still listen in on what's going on and, you know, keep her involved.”
Paulette Washington also still makes the sauce on occasion. That atomic-orange, vinegar-based barbecue sauce remains a family secret, Woodrow says, but he does divulge one key ingredient.
“It’s made with love,” he says. “All the ingredients -- l, o, v, e.”
You hear a lot about the low-and-slow method when it comes to smoking meat, but at Archibald’s, Woodrow says, it’s hot and fast.
“At no time have I ever put a gauge on the temperature since I've been working, and I never seen my granddad put a gauge on it, either. So, it’s just hot as you need it.”
Back in the day, the Archibald’s menu was just ribs, pork, white bread and potato chips. Over the years, though, they’ve expanded the menu.
“We do ribs, pork, half a chicken, wings,” Woodrow says. “We also do catfish and whiting. The sides. We have fries, potato salad, coleslaw, baked beans, fried okra and banana pudding with chips as well, and sweet tea with sodas.”
Woodrow’s wants to keep people coming back -- and not just when they’re in the mood for ribs.
“People don't eat barbecue five days a week,” he says. “So, to hopefully get them in for something else, they get barbecue one day, wings, one day, fish one day.”
Woodrow says some things at Archibald’s will never change, though. Those ribs. That sauce. The consistency.
“It’s just like we have on the menu -- a family tradition,” he says. “So, we're trying to hold up to that and make sure our food stays (up to the) standards as if my granddaddy was out there cooking it himself. So that's the goal every day.”
Besides being a barbecue man, Woodrow also worked with the Tuscaloosa Fire Department for 20 years, retiring as a captain. But he says there’s no retirement from the barbecue business.
“Death do us part,” he says. “That's how it goes. For life.”
