Linkdown: 1/5/21

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My new year’s resolution: I will finally do pork steak’s in my backyard. Mark my word. Now, just to find a local grocery or butcher shop that has them or will cut them for me. -Monk

Native News

Congrats to Jon G’s Barbecue on their receipt of this award from Hometown Heroes of Union County

Three barbecue joints – Midwood Smokehouse, Sweet Lew’s BBQ, and Noble Smoke – make Charlotte Magazine’s 50 best restaurants in Charlotte list

Highlands Smokehouse has new ownership, and they aim to bring a beer garden vibe to the barbecue restaurant

Bib’s Downtown in Winston-Salem was the latest casualty of the pandemic right before the new year

Sweet Lew’s BBQ is the one barbecue joint on the list, but mmmm…pork and chicken skins

Apple City BBQ in Taylorsville introduces a few new menu items for 2021 that have a local bent to them: their hot links will be sourced from Chapman Cattle Company in Alexander County and their grits will be stone ground the old fashioned way at Linney’s Water Mill

Non-Native News

RIP to Mike Mills of 17th Street Barbecue, simply known as “The Legend”

So this happened

…which led to Texas Monthly’s Daniel Vaughn attempting to recreate

Donnie Harris Sr of Pack Jack Barbecue in Sebastapol has been smoking for 40 years

Ribs n Reds is NC-born Chef Bryce Shuman’s pivot to barbecue

Kevin’s BBQ Joints with a couple of recent posts about the knives and sharpeners that barbecue joints use

5 lb barbecue cake

LOL

Linkdown: 3/6/19

Congrats to Bryan Furman of B’s Cracklin’ Barbeque for his James Beard Award semifinal nomination!

Veteran Charlotte restaurateur Pierre Bader closes City Smoke, cites that he doesn’t “see any growth in the barbecue business in Charlotte.” I would argue that he might have seen growth had his restaurant’s barbecue been better (they were 40 out of 42 on our list before their close)

Local Charlotte barbecue guy Jack Arnold recently had his Instagram hacked but thankfully has since recovered it

A new barbecue cookbook is coming from photographer Ken Goodman:

Wilson gets a new barbecue restaurant in New South BBQ, which takes an “international house of barbecue” approach

Longleaf Swine (nice name), a food truck caterer in Raleigh, is going brick and mortar in the Transfer Co. Food Hall

The Free Times in Columbia breaks down barbecue restaurants both local and within a few hours drive

Food and Wine is loving Columbia, SC and thinks you should try to the hash: “Don’t fill up on grits, because you must also try the barbecue, which will be pork, served along with that could-stop-traffic yellow sauce, and a side of that curiously delicious regional specialty, hash, which is nearly always served over rice. Essentially a stew of all the animal parts you probably wouldn’t eat separately, hash might come off a tad musky for some, but this is nose-to-tail cooking at its finest.”

I wonder how the folks in Texas are reacting to this:

For Kathleen Purvis’s last story as Charlotte Observer food writer, she takes a look at the fried pork skins at Sweet Lew’s BBQ as well as the fried chicken skin from Yolk. I love her writing and look forward to seeing what she does next.