Jones Bar-B-Q Diner

The smoking business was first started by the current owner's grandfather's uncle, Joe.[1] The exact year it opened is disputed; Garden & Gun specified 1910 when naming it to their Barbecue Bucket List.[2] The Beard Foundation said it had been open "since at least the 1910s."[3] According to the Encyclopedia of Arkansas, it "is perhaps the oldest continuously operating restaurant in Arkansas, as well as perhaps the oldest continuously operating restaurant in the South owned by a black family."[4] According to Oxford American, it is "the oldest black-owned restaurant in the South, and, perhaps, one of the oldest family-owned black restaurants in the nation."[5] According to business guide Black Business, it is "believed to be the oldest black-owned restaurant in the country."[6] According to Southern Foodways Alliance, "there are some people who believe it's the oldest continually operated African American-owned restaurant in the South."[7] According to The Chicago Tribune, "Food historians say it may be one of the nation’s oldest restaurants owned by an African American family."[8]

Joe's nephew, Walter Jones, originally served barbecue on Fridays and Saturdays from the back porch of his dogtrot house.[3] Walter's son recalled in a 1986 interview that the first pit setup was "a hole in the ground, some iron pipes and a piece of fence wire, and two pieces of tin."[3][4][9]

The next owner was Walter's son, Hubert Jones. Hubert's son told Saveur that his father's original place was called The Hole in the Wall, because "that's what it was. Just a window in a wall where they sold meat from a washtub."[5][9] Hubert moved the business to its current location in 1964 and changed its name to Jones Bar-B-Q.[4]

The next and current owner is Hubert's son, James Jones, and his wife Betty.[10] In 2010 James Jones told Oxford American that his son, a local coach, was not planning to continue operating the business.[5]

In 2017 James Jones shared his recipes and permission to use the business name with Kevin Arnold, who opened a Jones Bar-B-Q in Jacksonville, Arkansas, about 100 miles (160 km) away.[11]

The Marianna diner is located in a white cinder block two-story shotgun house on a corner lot at 219 West Louisiana Street.[5][9][12] Hubert Jones and his wife lived upstairs when they operated it.[5]

Jones smokes 10 to 12 pork shoulders over oak and hickory in cinder-block pits for at least ten hours three times a week.[8][9] He simmers the cooked meat in sauce in a slow cooker. The sauce is thin and vinegar-based and contains paprika and cayenne.[5][13] The menu offers only chopped pork, either by the pound or as sandwiches on white bread such as Wonder[14] or Sunbeam,[13] with or without a mustard-based coleslaw.[4][13] As of August 2019, sandwiches were US$3.50, a pound of meat US$7.00 and a pint of sauce US$3.00.[8]

The diner opens at 6 a.m. six days a week and closes whenever it sells out, often by 11 a.m.[4][10] According to The Chicago Tribune, "On a summer Saturday, that could happen before 10 a.m."[8] There are only two tables,[15] providing seating for at most ten.[8]

As of 2010 the restaurant offered smoking service to hunters who would bring their catches in.[5]

In 2012 the James Beard Foundation named it an American Classic,[12] making it Arkansas' only Beard Award winner.[1] According to The Chicago Tribune, University of Mississippi academic John Edge "helped nudge the Beard Foundation" to consider the diner.[8]

In 2017 it was inducted into the inaugural class of the Arkansas Food Hall of Fame.[16] In 2019 Food & Wine named it the best barbecue in Arkansas.[17]