Daniel B.
Yelp
Best BBQ is a Hong Kong style Chinese BBQ food court stall located inside the Great Wall Supermarket in Duluth. This place is great. The name of the business is appropriate because it indeed is one of the best places in metro Atlanta to get Cantonese roasted meats. Hong Kong BBQ inside Chamblee's Chinatown Mall food court and Big Wong BBQ inside Hong Kong Supermarket's food court (Norcross) also come to mind as well as Ming's BBQ to a certain extent (ITP and OTP).
Best BBQ may be the best of the lot. It's certainly the newest, and cleanest, and they accept credit cards. Some of the aforementioned competitors are cash only.
Pork, duck, chicken -- they have it all and it's on display behind a glass window just like the street stalls in Hong Kong. This place is popular and the food turns over quick, meaning the meats stay fresh. I've sat and ate lunch here and seen entire racks of pork and several sets of whole duck get chopped and replenished at a brisk rate.
The BBQ meats are served in an assortment of styles. Examples:
- Pork: crispy (with fat), honey BBQ (char siu), BBQ spare ribs
- Duck: roasted, salted, bitter, crispy, pipa (flattened)
- Chicken: poached, soy sauce, salted, scallion oil (my dad's favorite)
BBQ isn't the only thing on the menu. There's also congee (rice porridge), noodle soups, rice dishes, dim sum, and other entrees. All very good. Like other Asian food court stalls, there are helpful picture menus on the wall.
Best BBQ actually has a rather long counter. Part of the counter has packaged, ready-made foods like pig ears (both marinated and unmarinated), chicken feet (just like dim sum), peanut fish, and duck kidneys.
Finally, one of the best "features" or "secrets" (it's not really a secret to Chinese people) of Best BBQ is you can buy fresh seafood (e.g. live lobster) and/or other foods at the supermarket and bring it over and the chefs will cook it for you. They are very accommodating as far as requests go. Dishes, whether it's foods you bring over from the supermarket or Best BBQ's own, are highly customizable, just so long as there's no language barrier (which there very may well be).
I think the prices are fair, especially for the quality of meat you get. I've found that the roasted meats here are generally fresher, leaner, and relatively less greasy than the other guys. Pork can be purchased at $9.50 per pound (perhaps slightly above the average going rate). Whole duck can be purchased for $21.95. Whole chicken, about $17-18 each. Note these have already been cooked and possibly seasoned or marinated.
Congee is affordable at roughly $5-7 per bowl. Noodle soups are $7-8 per bowl. Rice plates are roughly $7-8 each.
All of the roasted meats I've tried have been terrific. I highly recommend the honey BBQ pork (char siu), roast duck, soy sauce chicken, and scallion oil chicken. They are great on-the-go or at the food court. My family loves getting pounds of the roast pork by itself to take home.
The noodle soups are fantastic. The savory broth is comparably light to other Hong Kong noodle soups I've had around town. I like the egg noodles they use. Very appetizing. Chinese broccoli is a common veggie used in the soups to accompany the noodles and meat. Both the roast duck and BBQ pork go great in the soups. Note the duck is chopped and served bone-in. The crispy pork and BBQ pork are boneless. The duck meat is tender and the pork is simply delicious.
The rice plates are very good too. The meats are served over white rice with a generous helping of chopped Chinese mustard greens and a small bowl of chicken stock with taro and sweet potato. The soup is bland, but it's there to offset the richness and somewhat intense flavors of the roasted meats.
No matter what form of BBQ you order, the meats will be chopped and served directly from the display rack in front of you. It's fun to watch.
Don't overlook the dim sum either! Best BBQ's dim sum is actually quite good and stands up to the best dim sum restaurants in Atlanta. I've only had Best BBQ's dim sum on weekends around lunchtime, so I'm not sure if they offer dim sum on weekdays. Some dim sum items I like to get here are chicken feet (one of my favorite dim sum items since I was a child) and xiaolongbao, which are Shanghai soup dumplings. It's amazing how much great food this food court stall pumps out.
Payment is done upfront. Dine-in orders are served on trays. Take-out orders are served in Styrofoam or sturdy plastic containers with snap-shut lids and securely packaged/tied in plastic bags. A self-serve pitcher of water + disposable chopsticks, condiments (e.g. chili oil) are available at the pick-up counter. If dining in, trays with used dishes/silverware should be returned at the far left counter of the stall.
Ample parking is available in the Great Wall Supermarket parking lot. To find Best BBQ, enter the supermarket and the food court is directly to your left. Best BBQ is in the very back. Enjoy!