Dine JoCo | Powered by JNOW Media
Step inside Ay Güey Modern Mexican Cuisine and you might feel like you’ve entered a new world full of color, texture and unique flavor. It’s a sensory experience, a brief escape from the everyday into something vibrant and deeply rooted in culture.
Reach local diners and grow your restaurant’s visibility with Dine JoCo, Johnston Now Magazine’s highly anticipated annual dining guide! With 20,000 copies distributed year-round, your restaurant will be in front of both visitors and locals who are actively seeking great dining experiences.
We welcome all food and beverage establishments in Johnston County—don’t miss this chance to showcase your menu, specials and unique offerings.
Join us in celebrating the incredible food scene our community has to offer!
Advertiser InfoIt’s hard to believe this is the third edition of Dine JoCo. It’s an idea that we had been kicking around for years, and one that our editor, Jamie Strickland, helped us get off the ground back in 2024.
The cover might change, and a few of the restaurants might be different, but the premise remains the same — provide a culinary snapshot of the unique food culture that exists here in Johnston County.
My family moved here in 2008, and at the time with a population of around 85,000, Johnston County still felt small unless you were in Clayton proper or trying to get around 40/42.
These days, as the census number creeps closer to 250,000, JoCo just feels bigger. Faster. And certainly more crowded.
The food hasn’t really changed all that much, aside from there being more of it — and the very handy fact that DoorDash delivers all the way down Devil’s Racetrack.
You can still grab a Brightleaf hotdog at The Grocery Bag, some Eastern-style barbecue, if you’re into that sort of thing, from White Swan or put off a trip to Eastfield just long enough to sample classic country fare at Robbins Nest.
And I’ll put our collection of Mexican restaurants here in JoCo up against anybody’s. There are at least a half-dozen that I love, including El Barzon, where we have most of our office birthday lunches.
Like a number of great local eateries, it’s a place where you can sit, enjoy a meal and remember a time when the world outside spun a bit more slowly. There’s a ton of them within our county’s borders, and we hope the 2026 edition of Dine JoCo will help you discover a few of them.
Happy dining, friends!
Dine JoCo is an annual publication of JNOW Media for our Johnston County neighbors. No part of this magazine may be reproduced without written consent by the publisher. Advertisers take sole responsibility for the validity of their advertisement.