The 187-page book does mention the state’s signature varieties of smoked meat and sauce, but it also explores other North Carolina food traditions, including fish stew, Ocracoke fig cake, banana pudding, collards and even Moravian chicken pie. The book is part cookbook, part essay collection, part dining guide.
– Q 4 Fun interviews a board member of the NC BBQ Association
What makes you different than the other associations, societies and networks?
We train our judges to recognize and appreciate NC-style BBQ. Teams will be judged on their ability to produce traditional NC-style BBQ. I don’t think other sanctioning bodies concentrate on regional BBQ styles. Furthermore, we not only sanction competitions, but hold cooking classing and are beginning to work on projects that will promote NC BBQ to the general public. We don’t see the other bodies as competitors. We see them as partners and can hopefully jointly sanction some events as with this year’s comp in Washington with the NC Pork Council.
Name: Ed Mitchell’s Que Date: 9/4/14 Address: 359 Blackwell St, Durham, NC 27701 Order: Speedy: Carolina Baby Back Ribs platter with fries, collards, and Pork Slap Farmhouse Ale; Monk: Chopped whole hog BBQ platter with collards, mac and cheese, and Mother Earth Weeping Willow (link to menu) Price: $45
Monk: Ever since Speedy checked out Ed Mitchell’s Que back in May, I’ve been looking for excuses to make it to Durham myself. Our annual trip to the Hopscotch Music Festival afforded a great opportunity to do exactly that on our way into Raleigh (you may recall we had previously checked out Allen & Son, The Pit Raleigh, and Hursey’s during Hopscotches past).
Speedy: As this was my second trip, I knew what to expect when walking in, but I did get a pleasant surprise when the man Ed Mitchell himself was sitting at the bar. Honestly, I was a bit awe struck, so Monk and I let the man be for a bit while we got down to business.
Monk: I knew that I had to try the whole hog barbecue, Ed Mitchell’s speciality, so that was a no brainer. In his lone wolf review of Que, Speedy let it slip out that he actually likes eastern style just as much as Lexington style. At the time I found it to be a little blasphemous, but tasting Ed Mitchell’s whole hog barbecue has definitely changed my thinking that much more. It was perfectly moist and had just a hint of spiciness. Not a ton of bark, which is to be expected in whole hog barbecue, but the pork was really smoked to perfection.
Speedy: I can’t say much about the whole hog that I didn’t say before except to say that it was just as good this time around. Consistency can be difficult to achieve in the barbecue world, but with a pro like Ed Mitchell, it was a non-issue.
Monk: I think the takeaway here is that when you have a master working his craft – be it at Wayne Monk at Lexington Barbecue, Rodney Scott at Scott’s Bar-B-Que, Aaron Franklin at Franklin Barbecue or John Lewis at la Barbecue – regional styles shouldn’t get in the way. Just sit back and enjoy the deliciousness – and I certainly did on this trip.
Speedy: I didn’t have the ribs last time I was at Que and noticed they’ve since been renamed “Throwdown ribs” to pay homage to Ed Mitchell’s smack down of Bobby Flay. The ribs came out with a light glaze of sweet western style sauce and were seriously meaty. They were cooked too well – tender enough to come off the bone easily, but not so tender that you can’t get a good bite. The flavor was quite good. If I had one complaint, it’s that the western style sauce is slightly sweet for my taste, but it didn’t stop my from cleaning off my share of bones.
Monk: Speedy and I went splitsies with our meals since they don’t do combo plates, and these were the largest baby back ribs I’d ever seen at a restaurant. And as Speedy said, they were quite tender. The sides were scratch made in house and I didn’t taste anything wrong with either my collards or my mac and cheese. The collards were fresh and perfectly cooked while the mac and cheese was great. At this point, I haven’t tasted anything wrong with Ed Mitchell’s Que.
Speedy: I agree, Monk. Sometimes, as a world-renowned blogger (we are that, aren’t we?), I feel the need to find something negative to say about any place that I eat, but when treated to an amazing meal, sometimes its best to just sit back and enjoy it.
Monk: On his first visit, Speedy initially toyed with a 5 hog rating before eventually backing off to a 4.5 hog rating. We were having a very similar conversation as we wrapped up our meal this time around too. As we got our check, Ed Mitchell himself came around to check to see how things were and to make sure we enjoyed our food. Naturally, we took the opportunity to snap a quick photo with the legend (posing with his portrait and “The Pitmaster” from the back wall in the background at his insistence). And I must say, Ed was extremely gracious and kind, thanking us for coming in. In the car, Speedy and I discussed more and decided that Ed himself was reason enough to go with a 5 hog rating. Because if that kind of hospitality from the owner and pitmaster (in addition to his amazing food) isn’t reason enough to up the overall rating, I don’t know what is.
Hursey’s Bar-B-Q in Burlington has a tale like this to tell. In the mid-’40s, patriarch Sylvester Hursey and a good friend were engaged in a night of bacchanalian revelry — they had a little party that got out of hand — and at some point it seemed like a good idea to find a pig and cook it, so that’s what they did. I imagine them in the still heat of a Carolina summer’s night, climbing over a splintered wooden fence and into the pigpen. The moonlight broke through the limbs of the giant oak and shone on the chosen pig, as big as any pig there ever was, and the two of them wrestled with it into the night, coming this close to losing their own lives in the process, but finally emerging victorious. They had their pig, and then they dragged it halfway across Alamance County and fired up the pit and cooked it.
– The latest update on The Great NC BBQ Map states that the maps will mail out the week of 7/28-8/1 to all Kickstarter backers; also, they have a new logo
Rodney Scott we love you and your pulled pork, but we must concede the star of yesterday’s SC-TX BBQ Invitational was clearly John Lewis of Austin, Texas’ La Barbecue. The man’s beef brisket was O-face-inducingly good (I saw more than one pair of eyes roll back into eaters’ heads). And the pit master’s presence was all thanks to the members of Charleston Brown Water Society (CBWS), whose Holy City Brewing hoedown came off smokingly well, despite intermittent rain threats.
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