Charlotte

Linkdown: 4/9/14

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– The first three reviews from Marie, Let’s Eat!’s epic NC barbecue roadtrip last month have been posted: Red Bridges in Shelby, Wink’s King in Salisbury, and Lexington #1

– As beef prices rise, more and more Texas pitmasters are turning to pork

– Ranucci’s Big Butt BBQ, Grand Champions of the 2013 Q-City BBQ Competition, is hoping to crowdsource a portion of their new food truck

– Thrillist’s list of best barbecue in Atlanta

– The latest Carolina ‘Cue Restaurant featured in Our State Magazine is Bum’s Restaurant in Ayden

– JJ’s Red Hots is having a Bacon Beer & BBQ dinner on April 24 as part of NC Beer Month

– A short article on SC’s Barbecue Trail (via bbqboard)

– Mission BBQ, a military and first responder-focused Baltimore-based chain created by an Under Armour founder, opened earlier this week in Wilmington

– Another (more promising sounding) coastal barbecue restaurant, Southport Smokehouse BBQ, is opening sometime this month:

Natives of Lexington – a town some would argue is North Carolina’s barbecue ground zero – the Hemphills’ restaurant specialized in pork shoulders cooked over hickory logs “imported” from Davidson County. The pits, Elaine Hemphill said, were modeled after those at the famous Lexington Barbecue along Interstate 85 Business.

…

A trio of restaurateurs, Troy Knight, Jim Sparks and Ryan Salley (who will serve as pitmaster) has taken over the spot and are returning it to its roots. They’ll offer brisket, ribs and pulled pork with both Lexington-style and vinegar sauces cooked over hickory. Salley said he’ll mostly be smoking shoulders, a hallmark of the upstate variety, but would occasionally go whole hog, the more traditional method in the Eastern region.

– Scott’s BBQ is having their annual picnic on April 19 and oh how I wish I could make it back down to Hemingway for it

Linkdown: 4/2/14

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– The NC ‘Cuegrass Festival will take place April 26 in Raleigh outside of The Pit

– The latest update on The Great NC BBQ Map includes the fact that the map will eventually be able for purchase outside of the Kickstarter campaign; sign up on the mailing list to know exactly when

– Restaurateurs from Denver, NC will start selling eastern-style barbecue next month at a stand in downtown Belmont

– An update on the latest barbecue restaurants in the Triangle, including Ed Mitchell’s ‘Que which is set to open April 9

– Rocky Top BBQ Co. out of Monroe, NC will be representing NC in the upcoming season of BBQ Pitmasters, which starts April 12 (via bbqboard)

– Could Charlotte’s best barbecue come from a food truck? Restaurant Traffic seems to think so, specifically from Boone’s Bar-B-Que:

– BBQ is taking on Fried Chicken while Cheerwine is against Sweet Tea in this Southern Food Bracket (aka Mason-Dixon Madness)

– The latest brewdog at JJ’s Red Hots in Charlotte is a “BeerBQ” dog by Triple C Brewing

You reallllly don’t want to miss this one. Triple C brought in the big guns with ‘BeerBQ’. It starts with a big ass pork butt smoked and shredded to perfection. Then topped with a Smoked Amber BBQ sauce and finished with battered and deep fried onion pieces.  That is all. This one really doesn’t need any further explanation.

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Elwoods Barbecue & Burger Bar – Charlotte, NC (CLOSED)

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Name: Elwoods BBQ & Burger Bar
Date: 3/26/14
Address: 16139 Lancaster Hwy, Charlotte, NC 28277
Order: Classic Carolina Pulled Pork plate with cornbread, hush puppies, red slaw, and sweet tea (link to menu)
Price: $14

I never ate at the previous incarnation of Elwood’s Barbecue & Burger Bar (then simply known as Elwood’s BBQ) but from what I can tell I wasn’t missing much. Then last fall it was purchased by a couple of brothers-in-law, one of which was a former manager at Ri-Ra, who then hired a chef who previously worked at Burger Co. As I understand it, they immediately began to overhaul the menu and improve the quality of food.

But before I get to the food, Elwood’s interior is nice and generically rustic with a good array of televisions. With a solid beer list in tow, I imagine this could be a pretty good place to watch a [insert favorite sport here] game. In addition to wings and various burgers on the menu, they have barbecue in various forms – pulled pork, brisket, chicken, ribs, and burnt ends. Naturally, I ordered the pulled pork with hush puppies and red slaw.

The pulled pork came out in a mix of slightly dry and more moist shreds of pork. My order had decent pieces of bark (a welcome sight) that to my surprise had decent smoke. Very unexpected, considering there were no signs of a stick burner in the middle of this restaurant on the end of a strip mall. There were two pork sauces on the table: a “Piedmont” vinegar” sauce (which if we’re nitpicking was really an eastern-style vinegar sauce) and a non-traditional “Elwood’s” sauce that was tomato and vinegar-based with a special blend of spices. Of the two, the Elwood’s sauce worked best with the pork for me.

The menu states that all sides are scratch-made in house, which I can certainly appreciate. The hush puppies automatically came with a side of honey butter, which I am always happy to see. The red slaw had an off-putting brownish tint to it and had a slightly unappealing texture, so I did not finish it. Each plate order comes with cornbread, which was a little redundant with my hush puppies order but it was a nice, sweet-ish little muffin that I didn’t mind.

So Elwood’s Barbecue & Burger Bar exceeded my somewhat (and perhaps unfairly) low expectations going in. If it weren’t all the way in south Ballantyne I could see myself maybe going again in the right circumstances. As it stands, it’s an average barbecue restaurant for Charlotte.

-Monk

Ratings:
Atmosphere/Ambiance – 3 hogs
Pork – 3.5 hogs
Sides – 3 hogs
Overall – 3 Hogs

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Elwoods Barbecue & Burger Bar on Urbanspoon

Elwood's BBQ, Burgers and Ribs on Foodio54

Linkdown: 3/19/14

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– USA Today did a short profile on Bill Spoon’s in Charlotte with some interesting insight on Charlotte from a local historian

“The east/west split dates back to when there were very few people in the mountains, so east really means east of Raleigh where the coastal plains start and west the Piedmont foothills,” said Tom Hanchett, a historian at the city’s Levine Museum of the New South and expert on Southern food, who joined me for lunch. “Charlotte is not really in either part, it’s a city of newcomers and we have other people’s barbecue. One of our most popular restaurants is Georgia-style and we have a lot of Latino and even Vietnamese barbecue, so having Bill Spoon’s here is very special. It’s eastern, whole hog with some hot pepper in the vinegar.”

– The Great North Alabama BBQ Quest (via rlreevesjr)

– South Carolina’s BBQ cook-off season starts this weekend (via bbqboard)

– If you happened to be at 12 Bones in Asheville yesterday, you may have seen a Travel Channel crew filming at the restaurant to cover the “Hogzilla” sandwich, “a bacon, bratwurst and pulled pork sandwich which Garden and Gun magazine named one of the top in the country,” for an upcoming show “Sandwich Paradise”

– Q 4 Fun has a review of Sauceman’s BBQ

– This month’s Carolina ‘Cue in Our State Magazine is Little Pigs in Asheville

Hence, Little Pigs BBQ was actually just one of more than a hundred Little Pigs Barbecue of America franchises. “Those guys were good business guys but they didn’t know food,” Joe says. Back in the ’60s, the concept of fast food was just coming into its own. McDonald’s got its start in the ’40s as a barbecue restaurant, but switched over to burgers because the slow process of making barbecue was hard to replicate on a national scale. Little Pigs Barbecue of America only turned a profit for one year, 1963, and by 1967, the franchise was bankrupt. Barbecue was too hard to homogenize.

But Joe kept his restaurant open. He started doing things his own way. He’d already been offering barbecue sandwiches at a buy-one-get-one-free deal, and the line was out the door on the first day. If customers couldn’t make it to Little Pigs, Joe would bring his food to them.

– Want this so hard