"**Short Review:** This place is fantastic. You absolutely must try the links—though maybe don’t, so I can have more! They are by far the best in the Bay Area. The ribs are thick and meaty, and the brisket is delicious. The beans are loaded with chunks of meat, and the potato salad is excellent. I didn’t try any desserts.
**Long Review:** This location was originally Everett Jones BBQ. Shirley Everett, the sister who owned it, was so excited about the election of the first Black president in 2008 that she bought a building diagonally across and converted it into a cheesy Obama Museum/Church, full of Obama memorabilia for the public to purchase. Unfortunately, like many things associated with Obama, the museum failed, which I suspect caused significant financial issues that negatively impacted her BBQ business, leading to the closure of the original Everett Jones store in Fruitvale.
I first visited this spot after Everett Jones went out of business, when it was still under a different name, which I can't recall. For years, I didn't return even after it became Mz. Kettle's—my mistake. Anyone who has lived in the East Bay long enough may remember Flint's BBQ. Longtime East Bay residents still nostalgically reminisce about it. Willie Flintroy's store on 66th and Shattuck, across from the Starry Plough, was open until midnight on weekdays and 2 a.m. on weekends, often with a line out the door after midnight. The service was always slow and unfriendly, and the place was a mess; we would sometimes have inebriated chats with the cockroaches on the walls. But no one cared because the BBQ, especially the links, was just that good.
After the divorce, Mrs. Flintroy took over the store on San Pablo. Mr. Flint passed away in 1972, but his brother, Neil Freeman, kept the Shattuck location going strong until the early '90s. Unfortunately, rumors suggest that drug problems affected the younger generation, contributing to the BBQ joint's decline.
The takeaway from all of this is that Terry Brown, the owner of Mz. Kettle's, has been grilling BBQ in Oakland since the early '80s. He’s a true BBQ veteran in the East Bay, and his links are a testament to that."
