NC

Linkdown: 12/15/20

/ Barbecue Bros / Leave a comment

Featured

In his latest issue of The Cue Sheet, Robert Moss examines the ten best college cities or towns to attend according to nearby barbecue options. While my alma mater NC State is mentioned as a future possibility once the planned restaurants like Sam Jones BBQ, Wyatt’s Barbecue, and Longleaf Swine open their doors in 2021 (not to mention Prime BBQ in Knightdale that opened this year and the upcoming Ed Mitchell’s The Preserve), several NC towns make the list. Not on the list either is Chapel Hill, primarily due to the loss of Allen & Son last year.

East Carolina University in Greenville has B’s Barbecue, Sam Jones Barbecue and the two Ayden joints nearby (Skylight and Bum’s) and comes in at #9. Surprisingly, Catawba College in Salisbury, NC makes the list just ahead of Greenville due to a couple of joints in town (College Barbecue and Richard’s) plus its proximity to Lexington and its myriad options for barbecue.

That’s it for NC on this list but both Columbia and Charleston appear further down from our neighbors to the south. I won’t spoil the rest of the list, but if you think hard enough you can probably guess which university and city takes the #1 spot on the list.

Native News

The Great NC BBQ Map poster is 50% off through today

The Pinehurst Barbecue Festival is planned for September 3-5, 2021

The Bar-B-Q King is one of many COVID-friendly food options in Charlotte for walk-up or drive-thru (or in this case, drive-in)

In NC, barbecue sauce makes a great gift writes Spectrum News

OooWee BBQ has smoked meat by the pound available in take-and-bake meals

Primal BBQ is set to open in Wilmington later this month and will serve a little bit of everything

Longleaf Swine is one barbecue restaurant offering to-go meals in Raleigh

Wish I could attend this socially-distanced pig pickin’ in Durham this weekend

Chicken bog long sleeve tees from Buxton Hall released just in time for last minute Christmas shopping

Non-Native News

In perhaps the least surprising news of the week, Tim Carman found better options than the McRib in DC

Even though Pat Mahomes went to college in Texas, he prefers Kansas City barbecue

This smothered tater tots collaboration between Fox Bros Bar-B-Q and Nina and Rafi looks amazing

An American pitmaster living in Hong Kong names the US barbecue restaurants he dreams of going back to some day, including Rodney Scott’s BBQ, Cozy Corner, Franklin Barbecue, and Valentina’s Tex Mex BBQ

Pork n’ Pine Santa delivers pulled pork sammies in Baltimore

Linkdown: 12/9/20

/ Barbecue Bros / Leave a comment

Featured

Last week, an article that former Charlotte Observer food writer Kathleen Purvis did for Charlotte Magazine appeared online. It digs into Chef Jim Noble and his complicated stature in Charlotte’s restaurant landscape. On one hand, he is a well-respected and successful chef and restaurateur whose philanthropic pursuits include his King’s Kitchen restaurant that employs people who are under normal circumstances considered unemployable due to poverty, homelessness, or addiction. He is also a reverend who leads bible study at that same restaurant. On the other hand, he has a religiously conservative view on gay rights and was one of only two restaurateurs who officially supported House Bill 2 (or HB2) passed by the NC Legislature in 2015 that required transgender people to use the bathroom that conformed with the gender on their birth certificates, essentially wiping out a nondiscrimination ordinance enacted shortly before by the Charlotte City Council.

From there, Purvis zooms out to explore some of the history of discrimination in the south in both the past and the present. I won’t recap it here, but it’s definitely worth a read.

It should be noted that while Noble declined to be interviewed for Purvis’s story there is no record of Noble’s restaurants discriminating against anyone in the LGBTQ+ community. But that doesn’t mean that potential patrons of his restaurants (which, in addition to Noble Smoke includes two Rooster’s Kitchen locations and Bossy Beulah’s) won’t take his views into account in deciding whether or not to spend money there, regardless of whether they are part of the LGBTQ+ community or not.

I haven’t made a decision either way, but it certainly has been and will continue to be on my mind going forward.

Native News

Check out this beautifully restored sign at Red Bridges Barbecue Lodge

A City Barbeque will soon be occupying a former Steak ‘n Shake in Greensboro

Get your Jon G’s preorder in by next week

BBQ King in Lincolnton is also taking preorders for Christmas

Non-Native News

John Tanner doing yeoman’s work by taste testing the McRib

Speaking of the McRib, here’s Francis Lam’s bite-by-bite review from 10 years ago

A combination oyster bar, barbecue joint, and microbrewery is in the works from an ambitious Columbia, SC developer

A roundup of Greenville (SC) barbecue joints with a very high level primer on barbecue in the state

ICYMI, our Nashville Top 5 Posted on Monday

HOG POT

Linkdown: 12/2/20

/ Barbecue Bros / Leave a comment

Featured

Jordan Jackson, formerly of Bodacious Bar-B-Q in Longview, has resurfaced at Franklin Barbecue after a stint in rehab. Shortly after Bodacious Bar-B-Q was named the #4 barbecue restaurant in the last Texas Monthly top 50 list from 2017, Jackson disappeared and left both the restaurant and his protégé Bryan Bingham behind in reasons related to drugs and alcohol. This is a wonderfully reported story from Daniel Vaughn on the restaurant and people he left behind in Longview. Well worth your time.

Native News

Jon G’s gets a nice write up from AndrewLoves_

Charlotte Agenda has a local Charlotte gift guide, including barbecue rub from Midwood Smokehouse

A couple of barbecue-related items make WRAL Out and About’s NC foodie gift guide

Happy 4th Anniversary to the NC F&B Podcast who has interviewed lots of great NC barbecue personalities

Non-Native News

Chipotle gets in on the brisket trend

John Tanner’s Barbecue Blog gets in on the recent Georgia barbecue action

More Georgia barbecue

House Park Bar-B-Que was damaged by a fire early Tuesday morning but hopes to rebuild

Everything bagel chicken wings? Everything bagel chicken wings.

Colder temps call for chicken mull

Thanks for the shout out, Dan Williams! He cited our site in an interview on the Lang BBQ Smokers Blog.

DW: There are some millennials like me that seem to really care about these things, including some chefs opening bbq restaurants that care about continuing a regional bbq tradition, like Buxton Hall in Asheville. Organizations like the Southern Foodways Alliance are also trying to document what’s important about bbq in all of these various regions and profiling the key restaurant players in those places in the south. One of my favorite blogs, BarbecueBros.co, is run by some young guys who are just friends and like to write about regional bbq traditions and restaurants, particularly in the Carolinas which, in my view, is where we should start when talking about pork bbq.

Linkdown: 11/25/20

/ Barbecue Bros / Leave a comment

Featured

Eater Atlanta’s Mike Jordan speaks to a number of Atlanta-area pitmasters to get their take on “Georgia-style” barbecue, with the consensus that there is a style, but that you have to get out of Atlanta to try it and its not quite up there with the other “major” styles of barbecue.

The question of “what even is Georgia barbecue” seems to come up every few years and while I’m far from an expert when it comes the Peach State, I follow the lead of people who know more than me. Robert Moss notes in his latest issue of The Cue Sheet that Jordan didn’t quite venture far enough outside of Atlanta to get a true sense of Georgia-style barbecue. That is, chopped barbecue sandwiches, Brunswick stew, cole slaw, and sometimes a regional dish called chicken mull from the Athens area.

Finally, to get an even more impassioned defense of Georgia barbecue, I highly recommend you read our friend Grant’s missive from a few years back over at Marie, Let’s Eat. Grant knows more about Georgia barbecue than just about anyone out there, having done the legwork to travel to the farthest corners of the state in search of true barbecue. When it comes to Georgia barbecue, heed his word. In particular, he urges you to explore the Athens area:

What you might want to do is start in Athens, because some of the best barbecue in the country can be found here. Not too many people pish-poshed this notion, but a couple did, so let me be very clear: I think that Memphis is one of this country’s best barbecue cities. It’s home to Payne’s, Leonard’s, and the Bar-B-Q Shop, and they’re all amazing, and there are at least a dozen other darn good places there. I agree that Lexington NC is certainly one as well. I have only been here three very short times, but I’ve had four downright excellent meals and would love to return for a very long trip. I’m perfectly prepared to accept that Lockhart TX is one. It is unlikely that I will visit anytime soon, but I can believe the hype I hear. Its advocates are reliable correspondents. Kansas City, quite probably. Calvin Trillin believes in Arthur Bryant’s, and if you haven’t figured out how much debt I owe Trillin, you’re not paying attention.

So I’m not dismissing any other city when I say that the Athens area deserves to be given the same accolades. There’s room for it as well. I’ll say that the triangle formed by Zeb’s in Danielsville, Paul’s in Lexington, and Hot Thomas in Watkinsville is the region that I mean, and those three remarkably good restaurants are all in my top twenty somewhere. (They’re actually not in my top ten, about which more in a moment.) The photos accompanying this story come from our last weekend in Georgia before the move. We revisited Paul’s and Hot Thomas, along with Bill’s, which is just across the Clarke County line, outside of Hull, and Scott’s & BJ’s, the only one of these four with an actual Athens address.

(Not so) coincidentally, here’s Eater Atlanta’s list of best barbecue restaurants in the area they rolled out along with the “What is Georgia Barbecue?” article.

Native News

Adding Perry’s Pig Pickin’ BBQ in Mint Hill to my list

…same with The Smokehouse at Steve’s in Graham, courtesy of John Tanner’s Barbecue Blog

New merch from Stamey’s

Bear’s Smokehouse BBQ has opened its first location outside of Connecticut in Asheville’s South Slope by permanently parking a food truck on Coxe Ave

Non-Native News

The new Buc-ee’s in Florence, South Carolina will serve South Carolina barbecue alongside Texas barbecue

Home Team BBQ recently broke ground on its sixth location in Greenville, SC

Midwesterner on Midwest barbecue

How to make John Lewis’ green chile barbecue sauce at home, courtesy of Eater

Helen’s Bar-B-Que, by John T. Edge

Adrian Miller’s “Black Smoke” makes this list

Sometimes people are the worst

…but sometimes things work out

LOLZ