barbecue

Linkdown: 2/17/16

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– An interview with John Lewis ahead of his move  to bring Texas barbecue to Charleston

– Grant writes about fantastic barbecue around SC for Tabelog

– Speaking of Tabelog, Monk also wrote an article for them on underrated barbecue restaurants in NC

– Over on Marie, Let’s Eat! he revisits Old Clinton Bar-B-Q in Gray, GA

– Picnic, Midwood Smokehouse, and The Improper Pig all mentioned:

– Seoul Food Meat Co, a new restaurant with a “traditional BBQ menu…with an asian twist”, is set to open for dinner sometime this week in Charlotte

– EDIA Maps, the folks behind the Great NC BBQ and Beer Maps, is creating a Charlotte Adventure Map

– It’s been too long; I need to get back to Red Bridges

Friday Find: Oral History of Fresh Air Bar-B-Que

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Here’s a recently released oral history from Southern Foodways of the Jackson, GA barbecue joint Fresh Air Bar-B-Que.

Dr. Joel Watkins, a veterinarian, opened Fresh Air Bar-B-Que in 1929 to serve the rabbits and goats he raised and barbecued on the weekends. Dr. Watkins never cooked pork. George “Toots” Caston, a fifth-generation native of Jackson, introduced pork when he bought the place in 1952. His grandchildren remember how his barbecue business “permeated every part of his being.”

Today, the third generation of the Caston family is at the helm.

–Monk

Linkdown: 2/10/16

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– Picnic, a new whole hog barbecue restaurant in Durham, is now open

– It’s also one of Garden & Gun Magazine’s 5 restaurants they can’t wait to try

– The coast of NC is facing an invasion of other types of barbecue styles

“In all my pilgrimage up and down the coast, there was just very little good barbecue. The best you could hope for was to find something edible in a sea of mediocrity,” Early said. “When I go to the coast I go to eat fish. I don’t think of the coast as barbecue country.”

– The Charlotte Observer checked out Rusty’s Southern in San Francisco last week while there for Super Bowl 50 and found that the restaurant serves chopped Carolina pork and “would look and feel right at home in NoDa, or in his parents’ current hometown of Davidson”

– After last fall’s Hogs for the Cause was rained out, Home Team BBQ is having a block party March 12

-The title says it all: Two Franklin Barbecue Fans Joined in Holy Matrimony While Waiting in Line

– Our State takes on the Mallard Creek Barbecue

Best of Charlotte Barbecue: Pork

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Boone’s Bar-B-Que Kitchen
Combo from Boone’s Bar-B-Que Kitchen
Midwood Smokehouse

We initially started this blog in order to find the best barbecue restaurant in Charlotte. While we feel pretty comfortable with our current rankings on the big board having visited 40+ restaurants, what more logical next step than to explore the best meats and dishes in the greater Charlotte area? This is the first in our series. Click here to find the other posts.

We naturally start with pork, which in North Carolina is synonymous with the word “barbecue”. Because Charlotte is a city of transplants and “other people’s barbecue”, you don’t find much barbecue that you might expect of the region (that is, Lexington-style) and you actually find far more eastern-style restaurants. In fact, two of the three below serve eastern-style barbecue (with Boone’s serving his own family’s style recipe that doesn’t easily  classify in Lexington or eastern).

  1. Boone’s Bar-B-Que Kitchen
  2. Midwood Smokehouse (Original location; Ballantyne location)
  3. Bill Spoon’s Barbecue

Honorable Mention: The Smoke Pit (Concord)

What do you think? Have we missed the mark? Leave your comments below.