{"id":2694,"date":"2026-06-21T13:40:59","date_gmt":"2026-06-21T13:40:59","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/nextcitydigest.com\/?p=2694"},"modified":"2026-06-21T13:40:59","modified_gmt":"2026-06-21T13:40:59","slug":"how-the-bay-areas-barbecue-royalty-celebrates-a-cookout","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/nextcitydigest.com\/?p=2694","title":{"rendered":"How the Bay Area’s barbecue royalty celebrates a cookout"},"content":{"rendered":"

Growing up in the barbecue business, Dorcia White was rarely invited to cookouts.<\/p>

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Her friends figured she was tired of being around pitmasters cooking brisket and ribs as the daughter of the legendary barbecue family Everett and Jones. But at Roberts Park in the Oakland Hills, labor gave way to leisurely afternoons around the baseball diamond as the sprawling family let White enjoy the ultimate luxury: the freedom of being a kid without a job to do.<\/p>\n

Barbecue courses through veins of the Everett family in Oakland, emulsifying a history of joy and strife that walked to school on bare feet in Alabama to opening their first shop along what is now International Boulevard in East Oakland and through the election of Barack Obama, whereupon Everett & Jones Barbeque held a cookout to celebrate the America\u2019s first Black president.<\/p>\n

For the purveyors of the Bay Area chain Everett & Jones Barbeque, a cookout isn\u2019t just a celebration, it\u2019s the mode of operation.<\/p>\n

White, owner of the restaurant\u2019s downtown Oakland location, described how her grandmother, Dorothy Turner Everett, imprinted the values of \u201ctaking care of family, keeping tradition, and helping community\u201d in each successive generation. It\u2019s the reason why \u2013 as many of the region\u2019s barbecue family businesses have shuttered or relocated \u2013 Everett & Jones has remained a cultural fixture.<\/p>\n

\u201cI started working for my family at 14. I remember being at Skyline High School and I\u2019m sitting in class, and someone said, \u2018I smell barbecue,\u2019\u201d White said. \u201cI knew it was me, but I wasn\u2019t going to say. I knew I had barbecue in my pores.\u201d<\/p>\n

Before Everett & Jones became the standard for Bay Area barbecue, they were just a family in Mississippi, near the Alabama border. Today, that region is known for its vinegar-based sauces, akin to styles in North Carolina and its tomato-based sauces influenced by the proximity to Tennessee, according to the Encyclopedia of Alabama.<\/p>\n

A family photo, circa 1948-1949, hangs in each Everett & Jones establishment, with the Everett family posing outside a school house in Westpoint, Alabama \u2013 the boys wearing overalls, the girls wearing white dresses and none wearing shoes.<\/p>

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Everett, who would become the family\u2019s matriarch, was about 16 years old at the time.<\/p>\n

\u201cThey moved their family here out West from the South because my grandfather was working on the railroad,\u201d White said about her family\u2019s migration in 1952. \u201cThey had nine children \u2013 eight girls and one boy at the time.\u201d<\/p>\n

The plentiful jobs found at Oakland\u2019s shipyards and maritime industries attracted tens of thousands of Black families from the South in the post-World War II boom years as part of the \u201cGreat Migration\u201d of African Americans from the Jim Crow South.<\/p>\n

\u201cProbably never before in the history of the United States has there been an internal population movement of such magnitude as in the past seven eventful years,\u201d the U.S. Census Bureau wrote in 1948.<\/p>

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When those families opened barbecue joints in the 1960s, their regional recipes stayed, whether it was Creole-spices of Jenkins\u2019 Original BBQ or the brown sugar sweetness of Kansas City at KC BBQ. Both have shuttered since 2023.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt must have been very popular because Jenkins barbecue was an African-American barbecue as well as Flint\u2019s Barbecue was an African-American barbecue,\u201d White said.<\/p>\n

The ties between Oakland\u2019s Southern transplants and barbecue was reinforced when White was cleaning the home of a great aunt who had just passed away.<\/p>\n

\u201cHer and her sisters, a lot of them worked at other barbecues,\u201d White said. \u201cMy grandmother (Dorothy) actually worked at Jenkins and she also worked at Flint\u2019s Barbecue.\u201d<\/p>\n

When Everett and her husband split, she was left to raise nine children. Using her knowledge from the local barbecue industry, she secured a $700 loan from a friend and opened Everett & Jones Barbeque in 1973.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt was rooted in a woman just really wanting to take care of her children,\u201d White said. \u201cThat\u2019s how Everett & Jones started.\u201d<\/p>

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The main draw was Everett\u2019s Special \u2018Que Sauce, a tangy and savory tomato-based barbecue concoction influenced by Everett\u2019s time working in barbecue joints in Oakland \u2013 a truly original Bay Area original sauce.<\/p>\n

However, it\u2019s not just about the sauce.<\/p>\n