Linkdown

Linkdown: 7/9/14

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– How well do you know southern barbecue? Take this ten question Garden & Gun Magazine quiz to find out.

– This weekend’s Carolina West RibFest (formerly the Carolina Mountain RibFest) in Asheville will feature Mexican wrestlers and fire breathers in addition to ribs

– barbecuerankings hits up Skylight Inn and B’s, Wilber’s, and Grady’s this week

– la Barbecue is moving to the GoodLife Food Park in early August and will add a third pit

– Gear Patrol hits up 6 “must-eat” BBQ stops inTexas (via bbqboard)

– A Thrillist list of “6 most important barbecue sauce styles in the country” includes both eastern and western NC (via)

– Despite all its delicious barbecue, NC only managed 11th in this Thrillist list of the 50 states ranked by their food and drink; hey, at least we weren’t Virginia (#32)

“Virginia is for lovers, country ham aficionados and wishing that BBQ you’re eating had come from North Carolina.”

– Kevin Gillespie (of Top Chef fame) borrowed a burn barrel from Rodney Scott and cooked whole hog barbecue this past weekend; he will be opening a barbecue restaurant called Terminus City in Atlanta next Spring

Linkdown – 6/30/14

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– Another dubious barbecue list, this time from Cheaptickets.com; the only NC city represented is…Charlotte. Wait, what? (via bbqboard)

– Daniel Vaughn gets a mention in this NPR article about the traditional method of cooking barbecue: low and slow

– WRAL out of Raleigh lists the best local beers for your July 4th cookouts and while not officially listed, it ends with a suggestion for barbecue

We really can’t overlook one of the beers in the Triangle that screams barbecue and is a staple for your grill – Fullsteam’s Hogwash. This beer was made for eating Carolina BBQ and would also make a fantastic marinade.

– A couple originally from Jacksonville have opened a new NC barbecue joint called Unkl Sid’s BBQ Shack near Pittsburgh

– A list on USA Today of best southern barbecue spots includes Big Bob Gibson’s (with a location in Monroe), Lexington #1, Skylight Inn, and Scott’s Bar-B-Que

– barbecuerankings also posted a review of Midwood Smokehouse this week and generally liked what he ate; he also posted a review of Mac’s Speed Shop 

I’ve been to a number of places east of the Mississippi who put their restaurant’s reputation on the line with their brisket.  Some (4 Rivers, Full Service, for example) totally back up their claim with great brisket.  Others…no need to mention names…don’t quite stack up.  Midwood’s staff have spent time studying, learning and eating in Texas to learn from the masters of the craft and the results are evident as they make a quality brisket.

– For our short family trip to Atlanta this past weekend, Grant of Marie, Let’s Eat! wrote a letter to Mrs. Monk when I mentioned we may only have time to head to one barbecue spot (he also had some nice things to say about this site, which was cool). Unfortunately, we only did eat at one barbecue joint (we did some smoking of brisket and ribs on our own Saturday) but we changed it from our original plan of Fox Brothers to Heirloom Market based on his suggestion:

With this in mind, I understand that you will be visiting Atlanta this weekend. Unfortunately, Atlanta is 88 miles from Georgia’s best barbecue (Old Clinton in Gray) and 311 miles from Georgia’s second-best barbecue (Southern Soul on St Simons Island), never mind the holy trinity of joints around Athens (Paul’s, Zeb’s, and Hot Thomas), and you can’t get Columbus mustard sauce anywhere here, never mind that weird mustard-vinegar stuff that they cook the pork in everywhere around Macon, but nevertheless, Atlanta and its suburbs are home to at least eighty – that’s 80 – barbecue joints, and those are just the ones we know about. At least twelve of those will provide meals amazing enough to give anybody pause, and I assure you that many, such as Mustard Seed, Miss Betty’s, Wallace, and Speedi-Pig, will provide meals quite unlike anything any North Carolinian can get at home.

Linkdown: 6/25/14

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– While the newest incarnation of the Hornets opted not to use Alexander Julian as a free consultant to help design their new uniforms, he designed the original ones in exchange for barbecue

Julian was already a standout in the design world because of his “Colours” collection of men’s clothes when Shinn asked him in the 1980s to come up with the Hornets’ original uniforms. Julian said he would do it if Shinn would ship five pounds of barbecue to his house in Connecticut every month – “Carolina caviar,” as Julian called it.

“I had no idea that an expansion team uniform was going to sell as much as it did,” Julian said. “I was really dumb. I didn’t know what I was giving up. I normally get a five percent royalty. The reports I saw was that they sold over $200 million worth of stuff. So I traded $10 million for some barbecue. George got rich, and I got fat.”

– Stamey’s was featured on the Cooking Channel show “Man Fire Food” (via bbqboard) yesterday

– Well this sounds promising:

– Yet another list of best barbecue joints in America, this time from Smart Travel list (via Huffington Post). At least it’s pretty accurate for NC, both in the description of east vs. Lexington styles as well as the joints they choose

Where to Get It: Our resident North Carolinian editor says Allen & Son in Chapel Hill is quintessential, with large brick pits out back and telltale checkered oilcloth on the tables inside. Skylight Inn in Ayden earns Southern Living‘s high praises for its whole-hog approach. Locals laud Lexington Barbecue‘s wood-smoked, ketchup-laced pork shoulder; a roll to heap it on will cost you $0.17 extra, and some Cheerwine (a super-carbonated cherry soda native to the area) is the only proper accompaniment.

– From a few weeks back, Daniel Vaughn (aka bbqsnob) had the good fortune to explore whole hog barbecue through tasting it from Ed Mitchell, Samuel Jones, and Rodney Scott at The Big Apple BBQ event earlier this month

– Robert Moss explains smokers across the south in this article for Serious Eats (via)

– 8 Things to Eat at a Charlotte Knights game includes two barbecue items from Queen City Q – a pulled pork potato and a pulled pork sandwich

– Q4Fun figures out which beers from NoDa Brewing pairs best with various barbecue dishes

  • Pulled pork
  • Mustard sauce – Ramble on Red – counterbalances the acidity – competing flavors 
  • Vinegar sauce – Ramble on Red or Cavu 
  • KC style sauce – Hop Drop ‘n Roll 

– This Fourth of July, feel free to go with slaw as a side dish at your cookout

“Slaw is universal,” says John Shelton Reed, author of “Holy Smoke: The Big Book of North Carolina Barbecue .” “Slaw is part of the deal unless you ask not to have it.”

– Well this looks amazing: John Lewis of la Barbecue and Rodney Scott of Scott’s Bar-B-Que to smoke barbecue together in Charleston; too bad its on a Sunday and during the World Cup Final

Linkdown: 6/18/14

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– A review of the Mighty Quinn’s in Clifton, NJ

– Hogs for the Cause out of New Orleans has added an event in Charleston dubbed Holy City Hogs

– Ed Mitchell’s barbecue made an impression on Zagat from the Big Apple BBQ a few weeks back (via)

Whole hog from pitmaster Ed Mitchell

North Carolina-based pitmaster Ed Mitchell recently opened Durham restaurant Que with his son Ryan. At this weekend’s event he prepared whole hog which was tossed in the classic North Carolina vinegar-based sauce, resulting in some of the most interesting and complex flavors we tasted. 

– New location, new management for Hog Day, this year in Efland

– Three Salisbury men have created Little E Sauces and Marinades, a line of rubs, marinades, and sauces that has been picked up by Food Lion

– A Beer Pilgrim’s review of 12 Bones Smokehouse in Asheville

– Marie, Let’s Eat! visits Lovie’s BBQ in the Buckhead neighborhood of Atlanta, that, while isn’t a Lexington-style joint, has a thin vinegar sauce somewhat reminiscent of a Lexington dip

There is only one sauce available, and it’s as close to a Lexington-style thin vinegar-tomato mix as you’re likely to find in Atlanta. I don’t know that it went all that well with the chicken, but the pork just loved it.

– The Great NC BBQ Map should be shipping out for customers to receive maps by the end of July, and the final tally of barbecue restaurants is kind of mind-blowing

How many restaurants ended up on the map? Guess. We don’t think you’ll believe the number….

FOUR HUNDRED AND THIRTY FOUR!!!!

Yes, you read that right. 434. And another 42 barbecue festivals and cook-offs! So get your bellies ready.