Linkdown: 10/7/15

-Buxton Hall is now open 7 days a week for lunch and dinner

– Wilmington’s got a new eastern, whole hog barbecue food cart that hopes to turn into a brick and mortar place

– Queen City Q remains busy – in addition to their Matthews location opening up in the summer and announcing a partnership for the Hornets, they are eyeing a third location in Concord

– An article on food trucks in Gaston County features Ranucci’s Big Butt BBQ

– John Mueller’s barbecue pit was stolen

– In what I hope becomes a new trend, Melvin’s Barbecue in Charleston returns to all wood smoking

– The Simpsons did it: a barbecue episode (they apparently did their homework too)

Linkdown: 9/30/15

– This year’s 86th Annual Mallard Creek Barbecue will be on Thursday, October 22

– Queen City Q and the Hornets enter into a partnership for the upcoming NBA season

As part of the multi-year agreement, Queen City Q will operate a pair of branded concession stands at Time Warner Cable Arena, one on the lower level and one on the upper level, allowing fans to enjoy some of the area’s best and most popular barbecue while attending events in the building.  Queen City Q products will also be featured on the arena’s suite menus.

– Charlotte Agenda makes one of their bold and click-baity proclamations that “the best barbecue in Charlotte just might be sold by Boy Scouts

-The second Charlotte-area location of Smoke opens in Stonecrest next week

– Steve Raichlen has some barbecue secrets from Ed Mitchell in the HuffPo

– Marie, Let’s Eat! visits the newer, larger Character’s Famouse BBQ in Adairsville, GA – you might recognize its pitmaster Michael Character from BBQ Pitmasters

– NOLA Smokehouse in New Orleans closes this Saturday

– Johnny Fugitt has 7 recipes he must try from the 12 Bones cookbook

– Robert Moss’ list of the south’s best barbecue beverages rightly includes Cheerwine

– Some details on a pre-Barbecue Festival shindig:

-Speaking of Lexington, Brad Livengood of The Lexington Dispatch has some barbecue history regarding pirates I previously had not come across

Pirates loved to party, and there was nothing like a good pig picking to make a party atmosphere. So they devised a process based upon an apparatus made of green wood. It was a rack of sorts, to hold the pig’s carcass as it was being smoked. The rack was placed over a pit filled with charred embers to slowly simmer the meat. They called the process, the boucan. Its practitioners were soon known as boucaneers. The often used synonym for pirate, buccaneer, comes from this method of cooking barbecue. I don’t know if there was hickory wood involved, but it surely was smoked and pit-cooked. So we lovers of barbecue in Davidson County have something in common with Blackbeard and his ilk, and it’s just a short walk down the pages of history from the tastebuds of some cutthroat pirate to our love of a chopped sandwich today.

– Lucky Peach says there are 14 (!?) styles of american barbecue

Linkdown: 9/16/15

– Robert Moss’s second part in his Best of Southern BBQ Awards

– On the different styles of Texas barbecue, from Daniel Vaughn

– Washington Post has a job profile on a barbecue pitmaster from the DC area

– According to Charlotte Observer food critic Helen Schwab, the pork sammie from Kyle Fletcher’s is one of the 5 must-eat dishes for newcomers to the Charlotte area

– Elliot Moss of Buxton Hall is participating in The Hangout Oyster Cook-Off & Craft Beer Weekend in Gulf Shores, AL in November

– TMBBQ has some barbecue recommendations for Colbert in NYC (though he’s been filming there for almost 10 years now)

Linkdown: 9/9/15

-Did you know? Whole hog barbecue has been a NC pastime for over 300 years

-Barbecue traditions from around the world:

– Though Labor Day has come and gone, here’s some history on the holiday and barbecue that goes back to the early 1900’s

1901 marked the first official recognition of Labor Day in North Carolina, and its celebration included barbecue, too. In Raleigh, the city’s union members and their guests gathered at the State Fairgrounds for music, speeches, and a baseball game between the printers and the pressmen-binders unions. It closed with a feast, and the Raleigh News & Observer noted that, “The tables were laden with Brunswick stew, barbecue, salads, breads, and all the little side dishes that tickle the palate.”

– In Charlotte, the Ballantyne Hotel & Lodge’s Gallery Bar has their hands on two Woodford Reserve Personal Selection Bourbons and are launching them with a barbecue dinner this Friday

– Marie, Let’s Eat! revisits Barbecue Street in Kennesaw, GA and finds it to be a much better visit than his previous two trips there, particularly the newly-changed brunswick stew

– Southern Foodways Alliance previews an upcoming Gravy podcast with “Texans and a Barbecue Love Affair”

-There is a Barbecue Presbyterian Church in Sanford, NC – suck it, every other state – and they are having a barbecue dinner later this month

-Johnny Fugitt has 7 things you need to know about barbecue in America in 2015 based on his barbecue travels in 2014