A FAMILY AFFAIR
By Chris Wadsworth
The moment Frank Gorey knew he was going to buy the Carolina Brothers Pit BBQ restaurant came down to what appeared like a high stakes negotiation.
“We came up with a fair value of what we would pay. I wrote it down on a piece of paper … and slid it across the table,” Frank said.
The seller – Danny Hurdle, the founder of Carolina Brothers – picked up the paper, looked at it and had to chuckle. It was the same figure he had chosen to sell the place for.
“It was the exact same amount,” Frank recalled. “We said, ‘We have a deal. We’re going to make this work.’”
A little background may explain why it seems fate had a hand in Gorey becoming the owner of the popular barbecue restaurant on Ashburn Road.
For decades, the building was the home of the Partlow Bros. store – a general store that was the beating heart of the tiny Ashburn community pre-boom.
In 2006, the owners of the store sold the building to Hurdle, a stonemason by trade who made killer barbecue on the side. He opened Carolina Brothers that same year – meaning this is the 20th anniversary for the restaurant.
A few years later – in April 2010 – the first Gorey came to work for the restaurant. That was Patrick. He was 15 years old at the time. Now, he’s a 31-year-old married father of two with a third child on the way.
Patrick Gorey was followed by his sister, Riley, his brother, Connor, and his brother, Ryan. All four teens grew up in Ashburn Village, graduated from Broad Run High School, and all four learned about hard work at Hurdle’s side amidst the smokers, ovens and refrigerators at Carolina Brothers.
So when the opportunity arose in 2022 to buy the restaurant lock, stock and barrel, the Gorey family were immediately the leading contenders.
Frank Gorey was retiring after 28 years working for Fairfax County in roles as diverse as a juvenile probation officer and a zoning inspector.
But he had worked in restaurants in college. And he’d watched his kids work nights, weekends and summers at Carolina Brothers. He knew taking it over would be hard work – but it just felt right.
“I gotta be honest – I don’t think my family ever thought I’d go through with it,” Frank said. “My wife was like, ‘Yeah, sure, pursue it, honey’ while thinking I was never going to do this.”
But he did do it – and to great success. Carolina Brothers BBQ was just named Best American Cuisine and Best BBQ by readers of Ashburn Magazine in this year’s Best of Ashburn competition.
Today, Frank and his wife, Bridget, are partners in the restaurant, along with his brother and sister-in-law, Kevin and Margaret Gorey, who live in North Carolina.
And more recently, eldest son Patrick – the one who started the whole thing rolling as a teenager looking for an afterschool job – bought in and became a partner, too.
“[It’s] nostalgic to be the ones who own and operate the old Partlow’s storefront,” Patrick said. “Getting to sling some BBQ there with your siblings and father right at your side is like stealing a little bit of extra time with everyone.”
Frank admits it was a tough start. It was the tail end of the pandemic and he was working 60 to 70 hours a week to learn the ins and outs and get the place where he wanted.
This included things like stripping the floors, putting in new light fixtures, and even – at long last– paving the crushed gravel parking lot.
“This is Ashburn,” Frank said with a laugh. “You have moms coming in $60,000 cars and $800 shoes and they just want to grab dinner. It was something that had to be done.”
Today, all the Goreys pitch in and help as their schedules permit, but third child, Connor, is the most involved – working in the restaurant full time.
He remembers being nervous when he started – there was so much to learn. For years, he stuck to front-of-house duties and prepping side dishes. But in the past few years, he’s taken on the role of head chopper – the heavy responsibility of the daily chopping of all the pork, brisket and beef.
“Over the years, I got more comfortable with doing everything,” he said. “Now, it’s kind of like the same as breathing.”
Connor arrives each morning, managing the meats, preparing sides and a dozen other jobs to get the store open and ready for the lunch rush. His proud dad knows he and Bridget can take off on a vacation as needed because Connor can run the place.
“I get to work with my dad every day, which is really nice,” Connor said. “We might be bickering all the time, but we love each other and it’s something I’m really grateful for.”
One thing that hasn’t really changed is the menu. Frank Gorey said he had (and still has) all kinds of ideas for upgrades, tweaks and new dishes. Smash burgers, kielbasa-style sausages, even vegetarian items (considering the diversity of the community) have all made the list.
But most of these ideas were quickly shot down by the kids who were loyal to how things had always been done.
“I had all these ideas about expanding the menu, throwing more things in there and they were like, ‘Dad, this is what people know Carolina Brothers for. Keep it simple, stupid,’” Frank said.
So, for now Gorey does his experimenting with limited-time specials like the family’s famous hotdog chili or a New Brunswick stew that proved popular this winter.
And we can confirm he hasn’t given up on the idea of adding a sausage of some sort to the menu eventually.
But bigger changes just aren’t in the cards anytime soon. He and his wife have two grandkids so far plus No. 3 on the way and hopefully more in the future. They want to have the flexibility to spend quality time with the growing family and not have it always be over a steaming table of pulled pork.
“Our grandkids call it ‘The Pig Store’ and they’ll hopefully grow up with memories of how cool it was to have this in the family.”
A family whose history and that of Carolina Brothers Pit BBQ are forever intertwined.