Linkdown

Linkdown: 12/9/20

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Last week, an article that former Charlotte Observer food writer Kathleen Purvis did for Charlotte Magazine appeared online. It digs into Chef Jim Noble and his complicated stature in Charlotte’s restaurant landscape. On one hand, he is a well-respected and successful chef and restaurateur whose philanthropic pursuits include his King’s Kitchen restaurant that employs people who are under normal circumstances considered unemployable due to poverty, homelessness, or addiction. He is also a reverend who leads bible study at that same restaurant. On the other hand, he has a religiously conservative view on gay rights and was one of only two restaurateurs who officially supported House Bill 2 (or HB2) passed by the NC Legislature in 2015 that required transgender people to use the bathroom that conformed with the gender on their birth certificates, essentially wiping out a nondiscrimination ordinance enacted shortly before by the Charlotte City Council.

From there, Purvis zooms out to explore some of the history of discrimination in the south in both the past and the present. I won’t recap it here, but it’s definitely worth a read.

It should be noted that while Noble declined to be interviewed for Purvis’s story there is no record of Noble’s restaurants discriminating against anyone in the LGBTQ+ community. But that doesn’t mean that potential patrons of his restaurants (which, in addition to Noble Smoke includes two Rooster’s Kitchen locations and Bossy Beulah’s) won’t take his views into account in deciding whether or not to spend money there, regardless of whether they are part of the LGBTQ+ community or not.

I haven’t made a decision either way, but it certainly has been and will continue to be on my mind going forward.

Native News

Check out this beautifully restored sign at Red Bridges Barbecue Lodge

A City Barbeque will soon be occupying a former Steak ‘n Shake in Greensboro

Get your Jon G’s preorder in by next week

BBQ King in Lincolnton is also taking preorders for Christmas

Non-Native News

John Tanner doing yeoman’s work by taste testing the McRib

Speaking of the McRib, here’s Francis Lam’s bite-by-bite review from 10 years ago

A combination oyster bar, barbecue joint, and microbrewery is in the works from an ambitious Columbia, SC developer

A roundup of Greenville (SC) barbecue joints with a very high level primer on barbecue in the state

ICYMI, our Nashville Top 5 Posted on Monday

HOG POT

Linkdown: 12/2/20

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Jordan Jackson, formerly of Bodacious Bar-B-Q in Longview, has resurfaced at Franklin Barbecue after a stint in rehab. Shortly after Bodacious Bar-B-Q was named the #4 barbecue restaurant in the last Texas Monthly top 50 list from 2017, Jackson disappeared and left both the restaurant and his protégé Bryan Bingham behind in reasons related to drugs and alcohol. This is a wonderfully reported story from Daniel Vaughn on the restaurant and people he left behind in Longview. Well worth your time.

Native News

Jon G’s gets a nice write up from AndrewLoves_

Charlotte Agenda has a local Charlotte gift guide, including barbecue rub from Midwood Smokehouse

A couple of barbecue-related items make WRAL Out and About’s NC foodie gift guide

Happy 4th Anniversary to the NC F&B Podcast who has interviewed lots of great NC barbecue personalities

Non-Native News

Chipotle gets in on the brisket trend

John Tanner’s Barbecue Blog gets in on the recent Georgia barbecue action

More Georgia barbecue

House Park Bar-B-Que was damaged by a fire early Tuesday morning but hopes to rebuild

Everything bagel chicken wings? Everything bagel chicken wings.

Colder temps call for chicken mull

Thanks for the shout out, Dan Williams! He cited our site in an interview on the Lang BBQ Smokers Blog.

DW: There are some millennials like me that seem to really care about these things, including some chefs opening bbq restaurants that care about continuing a regional bbq tradition, like Buxton Hall in Asheville. Organizations like the Southern Foodways Alliance are also trying to document what’s important about bbq in all of these various regions and profiling the key restaurant players in those places in the south. One of my favorite blogs, BarbecueBros.co, is run by some young guys who are just friends and like to write about regional bbq traditions and restaurants, particularly in the Carolinas which, in my view, is where we should start when talking about pork bbq.

Linkdown: 11/25/20

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Eater Atlanta’s Mike Jordan speaks to a number of Atlanta-area pitmasters to get their take on “Georgia-style” barbecue, with the consensus that there is a style, but that you have to get out of Atlanta to try it and its not quite up there with the other “major” styles of barbecue.

The question of “what even is Georgia barbecue” seems to come up every few years and while I’m far from an expert when it comes the Peach State, I follow the lead of people who know more than me. Robert Moss notes in his latest issue of The Cue Sheet that Jordan didn’t quite venture far enough outside of Atlanta to get a true sense of Georgia-style barbecue. That is, chopped barbecue sandwiches, Brunswick stew, cole slaw, and sometimes a regional dish called chicken mull from the Athens area.

Finally, to get an even more impassioned defense of Georgia barbecue, I highly recommend you read our friend Grant’s missive from a few years back over at Marie, Let’s Eat. Grant knows more about Georgia barbecue than just about anyone out there, having done the legwork to travel to the farthest corners of the state in search of true barbecue. When it comes to Georgia barbecue, heed his word. In particular, he urges you to explore the Athens area:

What you might want to do is start in Athens, because some of the best barbecue in the country can be found here. Not too many people pish-poshed this notion, but a couple did, so let me be very clear: I think that Memphis is one of this country’s best barbecue cities. It’s home to Payne’s, Leonard’s, and the Bar-B-Q Shop, and they’re all amazing, and there are at least a dozen other darn good places there. I agree that Lexington NC is certainly one as well. I have only been here three very short times, but I’ve had four downright excellent meals and would love to return for a very long trip. I’m perfectly prepared to accept that Lockhart TX is one. It is unlikely that I will visit anytime soon, but I can believe the hype I hear. Its advocates are reliable correspondents. Kansas City, quite probably. Calvin Trillin believes in Arthur Bryant’s, and if you haven’t figured out how much debt I owe Trillin, you’re not paying attention.

So I’m not dismissing any other city when I say that the Athens area deserves to be given the same accolades. There’s room for it as well. I’ll say that the triangle formed by Zeb’s in Danielsville, Paul’s in Lexington, and Hot Thomas in Watkinsville is the region that I mean, and those three remarkably good restaurants are all in my top twenty somewhere. (They’re actually not in my top ten, about which more in a moment.) The photos accompanying this story come from our last weekend in Georgia before the move. We revisited Paul’s and Hot Thomas, along with Bill’s, which is just across the Clarke County line, outside of Hull, and Scott’s & BJ’s, the only one of these four with an actual Athens address.

(Not so) coincidentally, here’s Eater Atlanta’s list of best barbecue restaurants in the area they rolled out along with the “What is Georgia Barbecue?” article.

Native News

Adding Perry’s Pig Pickin’ BBQ in Mint Hill to my list

…same with The Smokehouse at Steve’s in Graham, courtesy of John Tanner’s Barbecue Blog

New merch from Stamey’s

Bear’s Smokehouse BBQ has opened its first location outside of Connecticut in Asheville’s South Slope by permanently parking a food truck on Coxe Ave

Non-Native News

The new Buc-ee’s in Florence, South Carolina will serve South Carolina barbecue alongside Texas barbecue

Home Team BBQ recently broke ground on its sixth location in Greenville, SC

Midwesterner on Midwest barbecue

How to make John Lewis’ green chile barbecue sauce at home, courtesy of Eater

Helen’s Bar-B-Que, by John T. Edge

Adrian Miller’s “Black Smoke” makes this list

Sometimes people are the worst

…but sometimes things work out

LOLZ

Jack’s Bar-B-Que – Nashville, TN

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Name: Jack’s Bar-B-Que
Date: 11/11/20
Address: 1601 Charlotte Ave, Nashville, TN
Order: Three meat combo – brisket, pork, sausage, collards, baked apples, cornbread (link to menu)
Pricing: $

Speedy: One place in Nashville that does not get nearly enough love (including from yours truly) is Jack’s Bar-B-Que, a true OG of the Nashville ‘cue scene. Jack Cawthon opened his first restaurant on lower Broadway in 1989, and now has three locations including a different spot on Broadway, in the North Gulch on Charlotte Ave (where I visited this day), and in North Nashville. I have visited the Broadway location several times, but usually weekdays during lunch (back when people went to offices), or weekends while honky tonkin’ (back when people went to bars). I always told myself I’d write a review when I had time to visit and order more of the meats, and that time finally came.

Monk: I remember offices and bars…

Speedy: The Charlotte Ave location is much more spacious than on Broadway (I haven’t been to the North Nashville location), but in both places, you walk up to a cafeteria style line to order. Like a good Texas joint, the brisket and sausage is sliced right in front of you, but the pork has been pre-chopped. The sides, likewise, are in warming bins. The order of a three meat combo was an obvious one, though I was sad to leave out the ribs. Alas, next time.

Before diving into how everything tasted, let’s talk about value. The three meat combo is $17, which includes generous portions of each meat, two sides, and cornbread. If that was weighed out and served by the pound, you’d be paying close to twice that. Their by the pound prices are several dollars lower at each meat, including only $16.25 for a pound of brisket.

Great, so the barbecue is priced like it’s 2013, but how does it taste? Damn good. The brisket has a nice pepper flavor, and plenty of bark. It’s moist and tender and tastes great. It doesn’t quite melt in your mouth like the top-tier Texas brisket, but overall, it’s very good.

The pork at Jack’s is Tennessee pork shoulder. This may not be a popular opinion, but I prefer the shoulder to whole hog. The reason? The outside brown. The shoulder from Jack’s has plenty of outside brown chopped in. I didn’t taste any dip chopped in, but it was not dry at all. They call it Tennessee pork, but this is the closest I’ve come to finding Lexington-style pork shoulder (which we all know is the best) in Tennessee. Truly outstanding.

Monk: Now this Tennessee pork shoulder is intriguing, and something I gotta try the next time I’m in Nashville.

Speedy: The sausage was the one meat that was a slight disappointment to me. While smoked well, the flavor was a little plain. Next time, I’ll skip the sausage.

I don’t talk about sides much in my review, but I enjoyed the apples and the collards and absolutely loved the cornbread. Just a nice stamp on a great meal.

All the times I’ve been to Jack’s Bar-B-Que, it’s consistently been quite good. While not the sexiest place in Nashville (and certainly not the newest), it remains one of the best.

Ratings:
Atmosphere/Ambiance – 2.5 hogs
Brisket – 4 hogs
Pork – 4.5 hogs
Sausage – 2.5 hogs
Sides – 4 hogs
Overall – 4 hogs

Jacks Bar-B-Que Menu, Reviews, Photos, Location and Info - Zomato