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The Best Bites at last month’s Second Annual Jon G’s Jubilee

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Note: a version of this article originally appeared last month in The Smoke Sheet, a fantastic national barbecue newsletter that I regularly contribute to. For more information on how to subscribe, visit bbqnewsletter.com.

Monk: The Jon G’s Jubilee is part barbecue festival and part birthday celebration, with the first edition in 2023 created in honor of the 40th birthday of co-owner and pitmaster Garren Kirkman. This year, I made my way to Peachland around 4pm on a Saturday in late June – which, by the way, is an odd feeling if you’ve ever woken up closer to the crack of dawn to leave for a Barbecue Saturday – for this year’s edition of the Jubilee featuring contributions from N. Sea Oyster Co., Lawrence Barbecue, Elliott Moss, and of course Jon G’s Barbecue.

Most attendees at the Jubilee started with oysters from N. Sea Oyster Co. from Hampstead which is located near Topsail Beach on the North Carolina coast. They offered both raw and the barbecued oysters that were cooked on a Kudu grill next to the tent. The oysters were a touch on the small side for my liking but the raw with a “hog wash mignonette” were nice and briney while the barbecued with a chipotle bourbon butter were sublime.

Lawrence Barbecue‘s beef fat caramel wings were probably the food highlight of the evening for me. If I am recalling the process correctly, beef fat drippings from briskets are rendered into a caramel sauce with sugar and cumin, and then that is what the wings are dipped in after they are fried. These don’t appear to be a regular menu item at their shop in Durham but if they are ever on special, grab a friend and get as many as you can. Just ridiculously tasty.

Elliot Moss and his mobile BQ smoker was actually the first sight attendees saw when walking into the Jubilee in the the lawn area behind the Jon G’s building. Moss was a last minute addition to the festivities, announced just the week leading into the festival, but he was certainly a welcome one for barbecue fans in the know. He’s made some moves in his hometown of Florence that are still to be announced publicly (but are consistent with what he told me at the Carolina BBQ Festival) and safe to say that big things are in the works. I can’t wait to hear the full scope of his plans, which we should hopefully know more about in the coming weeks.

His whole hog was served pig pickin’ style straight from the pig cooker with a pot of vinegar pepper sauce and a white slaw. And it was as sublime as you would have expected from a fresh hog cooked on site the night before to be.

Finally, Jon G’s Barbecue came through with a beef rib croissant sandwich topped with chimichurri served with a side of burnt ends and a watermelon salad. The sandwich was a super-sized version of the slider beef rib croissant sandwich I had at the first Carolina BBQ Festival and the Smoke and Grapes event as part of 2022’s Charlotte Food and Wine Festival. It’s deliciously luxurious and indulgent and a neighbor at a nearby table noted that the sandwich was “the best thing [she’s] ever eaten” which honestly isn’t too far off from the truth. The usual excellence from Garren, Kelly, and team.

Thankfully, Garren has confirmed that the third edition of the Jon G’s Jubilee is already in the works, possibly with a move in timing (especially if wife and co-owner Kelly has anything to do with it). Whenever it’s announced, for barbecue fans in North and South Carolina it’s worth looking out for and adding to your calendar.

Friday Find: Carolina Whole Hog Barbecue in…Maryland?

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Link to Podcast | Link to Farm BBQ Website

Monk: Farm BBQ is bringing the whole hog gospel by serving eastern Carolina whole hog to Baltimore, Harford, and Cecil Counties in Maryland.  In this episode of The Low and Slow Barbecue Show from last month, Chigger sits down with two of the three guys behind Farm BBQ, Tommy and Will, to learn more about their beginnings in barbecue and how they see it as a way to promote not only whole hog but the local farms that produce the ingredients in their food.

Description: Believe it or not, the Carolinas don’t hold a monopoly on “Carolina barbecue.” In fact, you can even find it in the land of crab cakes. That’s where you’ll meet Farm BBQ, a Maryland-born barbecue pop-up that serves Carolina whole hog barbecue and promotes local family farms. In this episode of The Low & Slow Barbecue Show, we talk to Farm BBQ founders Mark, Tommie, and Will, and find out why they brought our Carolina barbecue traditions to Maryland. We discuss their business strategy focused on local farmers and creating a Carolina craft barbecue experience – 400 miles northeast of Lexington, N.C. Will and Tommie reveal the details about their house barbecue sauce – is it east or west? – and don’t miss their turn in the Low & Slow showdown. Barbecue – verb or noun?

The Rise and Fall and Rise of Pitmaster Ed Mitchell

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Link to web version

Monk: Pitmaster Ed Mitchell is in a curious spot these days. His name is in many ways synonymous with eastern North Carolina whole hog barbecue and his reach in the barbecue world is unmatched by few, but he hasn’t operated a barbecue restaurant in almost 10 years.

In this episode of the Southern Foodways Alliance’s Gravy podcast, North Carolina native Wilson Sayre recaps Mitchell’s story from starting to cook pigs at his parent’s grocery store in Wilson, NC in the wake of his father’s passing to that restaurant getting shut down for failing to pay taxes tax (with Mitchell spending time in jail) to partnering in opening The Pit in Raleigh and eventually the opening and closing of his short-lived Durham restaurant Ed Mitchell’s ‘Cue. Along the way, Ed brought on his son Ryan as a business partner to help him with his business decision making.

The Mitchell’s latest venture with restaurateur Lou Moshakos is called The Preserve and was set to open in 2020 (which was to be Raleigh’s “Year of Barbecue”) before getting sidetracked by the COVID-19 pandemic. Unfortunately, this episode is light on solid details for that restaurant, only saying that it is set to open “this spring” (though the episode was released May 22). But of course we’re starting to get into the summer months with little in the way of updates and The Preserve website doesn’t have much more information, only stating that “2023 is our year.”

Unfortunately, it seems as if Ed Mitchell is once again going to have to do it the hard way. All of us North Carolinians will be rooting hard for him.

Description: Ed Mitchell’s name has come to be synonymous with Eastern North Carolina wood-smoked whole-hog barbecue. From Wilson, North Carolina, he grew up smoking hogs and has tried to continue that tradition, using old techniques and traditionally farm-raised pigs.

But almost since the start, Ed Mitchell’s barbeque journey has not been a straight line—business relationships, racism, and smoke have all shaped his rollercoaster ride.

“Horn Barbecue” Joins Other Notable Black Barbecue Books

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Not that we’re anywhere close to being qualified enough to evaluate books but more so as a public service announcement we will periodically discuss barbecue and barbecue-related books.

Monk: Matt Horn first rose to barbecue prominence in 2016 after a series of pop-ups in the Bay Area of California, taking cues from Texas barbecue, the American South, and the Bay Area while attempting to create his own style of barbecue called “West Coast barbecue.” He parlayed the success of those pop-ups and his social media presence into a brick and mortar store in West Oakland, which he opened in 2020. And it wasn’t long before the awards followed: Food & Wine Best New Chef in 2021, Esquire’s Best New Restaurants in 2021, a Bib Gourmand from Michelin, and last but not least, a James Beard Award Nomination in 2022.

Also in 2022, Horn released his first book simply titled “Horn Barbecue” solely credited to him. With a foreword by Adrian Miller and blurbs from Miller, Aaron Franklin, Rodney Scott, and David Chang it surely placed him in esteemed company within the barbecue world.

After the short foreword by Miller where he details how his initial visit to taste Horn Barbecue was delayed due to to the pandemic (which explains why Horn wasn’t included in Miller’s 2021 book “Black Smoke”), Horn spends the next 10 or so pages telling his barbecue journey from his grandmother’s backyard to his acclaimed pop ups to finally opening up his restaurant in West Oakland.

Unfortunately, from there it follows what has become the standard template for a barbecue book these days: a section on the basics of barbecue detailing smokers and woods with tips on smoking before turning to a fairly standard set of recipes for proteins, sides, sauces, rubs, and desserts. Horn does write up a short intro for each recipe but there is no real compelling information after the barbecue journey ends on page 31.

The original Horn Barbecue restaurant location suffered a fire last fall before closing permanently this spring, but he has since reopened Horn Barbecue inside his throwback burger restaurant Matty’s Old-Fashioned. Horn has also teased a future concept called Horn Barbecue Shop which will be next door to his chicken restaurant Kowbird. As of this writing I don’t see any further information on this concept.

“Horn Barbecue” joins other books in recent years that have given voice to a historically underappreciated player in the barbecue field: “Black Smoke” by Adrian Miller in 2021, “Rodney Scott’s World of BBQ” by Rodney Scott and Lolis Eric Elie also in 2021, “Bludso’s BBQ Cookbook,” by Kevin Bludso in 2022, and more recently2023’s “Ed Mitchell’s Barbeque” by Ed and Ryan Mitchell with Zella Palmer. For me, the additional black voice in barbecue is always a welcome one even if this book itself is not quite from essential to add to your shelf.