BBQ Sauce by Region
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The Barbecue Bros Holiday Gift Guide!
The holidays are upon us, and if you are looking for a last minute gift for a NC barbecue lover in your life, I can personally recommend the following books. But you don’t have to take my word for it.
-Monk
My favorite of the three NC barbecue books listed here. A comprehensive and oftentimes funny history of barbecue in North Carolina with tons of extra information packed into the sidebars (think fun facts, photos, and graphics). There are also recipes and profiles of several barbecue pitmasters who are cooking barbecue the right way across the state. If his name sounds familiar, John Shelton Reed recently teamed up with the BBQ Jew to to create True ‘Cue.
Bob Garner’s Book of Barbecue: North Carolina’s Favorite Food by Bob Garner
This book is actually two books in one – North Carolina Barbecue: Flavored by Time and Bob Garner’s Guide to North Carolina Barbecue – and is part NC barbecue primer, part recipe book, and part restaurant reviews. All from “the barbecue man” and UNC-TV barbecue personality himself, Bob Garner.
The Best Tar Heel Barbecue: From Manteo to Murphy by Jim Early
This book is a little dated but is a fairly comprehensive listing of barbecue joints from the Outer Banks to the very western corner of the state, even if a handful of the restaurants have closed by now. Jim Early is the founder of the NC Barbecue Society, so he is also another man who definitely knows what he is talking about when it comes to NC barbecue.
What about you? What are your favorite barbecue-related books (NC or otherwise)? Feel free to respond in the comments.
Linkdown: 12/10/13
– Our State Magazine has been profiling a NC barbecue restaurant a month and this month they turn their attention to Midwood Smokehouse, currently #1 on the Barbecue Bros Charlotte big board
Frank Scibelli just comes right out and says it: If you want good barbecue in Charlotte, you don’t have a lot of options.
But Charlotte is growing, you say. There are more cooks cooking more food, and more varieties of it, than ever before.
“Still not good barbecue,” he says.
Maybe it’s got to do with the smoker. You have to have a smoker, he says. Not many barbecue places in Charlotte have one. He does. He mentions it over and over again. He asks if I’ve seen inside it, where at least one piece of hickory is burning 24 hours a day. He makes sure I know the only thing that powers his smoker is wood.
– The final report on the unfortunate Sandy Plains Baptist Church salmonella outbreak in Shelby in September confirms it was salmonella
– A look inside last weekend’s Garden and Gun Jubilee Made in the South Weekend, in which Rodney Scott had a pig roast on Sunday that had to have been amazing
– Old Carolina Barbecue set to open in Cleveland and appears to be trying to do it the right way
Before entering the business, Schafer toured the Carolinas and visited dozens of eateries to ensure his menu would be as genuine as possible.
“We didn’t invent barbecue, we just wanted to do it right,” he said. “There’s authenticity behind the recipes.”
Key to the barbecued items are large on-site smokers.
– For the uninitiated, a great primer on NC Barbecue (mostly eastern) from a man who clearly knows what he is talking about, Bob Garner (via, tambien en espanol)
– Finally, yet another plug to like us on Facebook and follow us on Twitter
Reader Submission
We received the following submission from someone calling himself “McLovin”:
Me and my wife decided to go have lunch on a Saturday at Smiley’s. First of all the claim that it is good food is a whole lie….I’ve had better. My wife ordered their chicken salad sandwich. It was HORRIBLE nothing special just in a regular burnt sandwich bread and their chicken salad didn’t taste good. we took one bite and told the lady at the cash registered that we did not eat the chicken salad sandwich and was told we had to pay for it anyway. You and I know well that when something does not taste good customer does not pay for it. We felt they were rude and greedy. Since then we have told our experience to our family and friends to avoid a bad experience. Bottom line is DONT EAT THERE!!!
After spending way too much time trying to figure out why an eight year old is married (age guess based on grammar skills), I decided to reply to our loyal reader McLovin’ to explain our positive review of Smiley’s. It appears that we had a much better experience than the dear reader. I think the main reason behind it is that we aren’t dumb. Seriously – who goes to any restaurant in Lexington and orders a chicken salad sandwich? I can’t stress enough how bad of a decision that was. It really calls into question every other decision your wife ever made (marriage vows included). So yea – if you want chicken salad, don’t go to Smiley’s. If you want great barbecue, then go on over and have yourself a great meal.
As for your assertion that you shouldn’t have to pay for food that doesn’t taste good, there’s a billion dollar health food industry that has something to say about that. So sorry the “greedy” folks at Smiley’s kept the outrageous $4.25 they charged you for your chicken salad sandwich, but next time, man up, order a real meal, and you’ll have a better experience.
Thanks for reading!
-Speedy