Monk: Fans of old school barbecue in Cleveland county have been relying upon Red Bridges Barbecue Lodge in Shelby for Piedmont-style barbecue for nearly 80 years. While originally started by Red Bridges in 1946, the restaurant is really a story of matriarchs. Red’s wife Lyttle continued to run the business after his passing in 1966, working over 12 hours each day until she retired at the age of 80. Today her daughter Debbie and granddaughter Natalie continue to carry the torch, with the same pits and same recipes.
In the below video, Al from Behind the Food TV gets schooled by Debbie, Natalie, and the men of Red Bridges Barbecue during an overnight smoke as they cook barbecue in temporary mobile pits that they used while their brick masonry pits were being repaired after a pit fire in the fall of 2024.
Along the way, we get a comprehensive history of the restaurant, Debbie’s choice of the restaurant over a modeling career, and how Natalie has slowly drug the restaurant into the 21st century as her mom has technically retired. Al also gets to prep the hush puppies and the barbecue slaw in the part of the kitchen known as “The Slaw Room.”
Needless to say, this was a very thorough schooling by the women of Red Bridges.
Description: In this epic story, the 2nd and 3rd generations of women running Red Bridges BBQ in Western North Carolina show me their almost 80 year-old tradition of cooking Shelby, NC style BBQ – and share the journey of all 3 generations of strong women defending their BBQ traditions.
Featured: In case you missed it, Red Bridges Barbecue Lodge in Shelby experienced a fire in their pit room late last week. It reportedly took 15 minutes to put out the fire but thankfully, the fire was contained by the firewall between the pitroom and the restaurant.
While in the immediate aftermath of the fire, the restaurant announced that it would be closed “indefinitely,” I’m happy to report that they are utilizing exterior pits and will reopen for their normal hours starting Wednesday (today!).
Eventually, Red Bridges will redo their pit room once they get through the insurance process. Thank goodness for that firewall, else we would’ve potentially lost an iconic barbecue restaurant that’s been around for nearly 80 years.
Native News
According to Edmar Simoes‘ Instagram, he has left Resident Culture and joined Flour Shop, a new American restaurant in the Montford neighborhood of Charlotte that utilizes a wood burning oven and emphasizes “a traditional style of cooking with fire while using the freshest, locally sourced ingredients.”
I reached out to Edmar and he confirmed the move and mentioned that he will be working on some sort of smoke special soon. So stay tuned.
Congrats to Longleaf Swine, who took home some awards in the recent News & Observer Raleigh’s Best List: Gold for Best Barbecue and Silver for Best Ribs & Best Chicken Wings
The Pik N Pig stall at the NC State Fair in Raleigh is always a popular stop
A recap of this past weekend’s Barbecue Festival in Lexington
In the afterglow of last weekend’s Concert for the Carolinas in Charlotte, here’s a great story on Eric Church’s early days playing at the old Woodlands Barbecue & Pickin’ Parlor in Blowing Rock from The State You’re In
Non-Native News
A couple of recent reviews from the ever-prolific friend of the blog, John Tanner, starting with smoked pastrami at ZZQ
…then he tried the Fletcher’s BBQ food truck that serves the Richmond area
…his most recent review is of Redemption BBQ in Short Pump, VA, which he proclaims may have the best pork in all of Virginia but don’t sleep on the Brunswick stew
Name: Union Barbecue Date: 8/17/24 Location: N/A Order: Carnitas, brisket, Smoky Sweet, Golden Beet Salad, The Big Deborah Pricing: $$
Monk: In recent years, the Charlotte barbecue scene has seemingly embraced Mexican or Tex-Mex flavors into Texas-style barbecue. Way back in the before times of January 2020, Midwood Smokehouse brought Miguel Vidal of Valentina’s Tex-Mex Barbecue in Austin to Charlotte for a few days for some consultation and their current menu is a reflection of that between the Yucatan ribs, taquitos appetizer, and their updated offerings of “Tex-Mex Tacos.”
There’s also Fumar (which is the rebrand of Smoke Show Barbecue) from Chef Brandon Belfer, who offers “taco packs” with beef cheek barbacoa and home made tortillas alongside specials that can include brisket tortas and Frito pies.
Then, earlier this year a new food truck called Union Barbecue from Chefs Holden Sasser and Chase Young burst onto the Charlotte barbecue scene with “new school barbecue” and “Mexican flavors.” They even got a mention from Texas Monthly Barbecue Editor Daniel Vaughn in a February post on his NC travels that praised their “smoky and spicy” beef cheek barbacoa.
Sasser recently relocated from San Francisco (where he was where he working by day in the food technology industry and spending nights and weekends doing barbecue pop-ups) to Charlotte, but he is no stranger to the city as he is the son of Tom Sasser who owns the Burke Hospitality Group whose restaurants include longtime Charlotte staples such as Mimosa Grill and the recently departed Harper’s. But make no mistake about it, Holden and Young can smoke their version of Tex-Mex barbecue well. At a recent food truck stop at Birdsong Brewing, I finally got a chance to try their wares.
For this stop, their protein menu consisted of barbacoa, al pastor sausage, carnitas, brisket, and a smoked pork chop. Seeing as I was with the wife and kids, I had a hard time picking two that I know would make up a sensible lunch order so I went with the brisket and carnitas. Based on the success of these, I’ll be trying each of their other proteins next time around.
The carnitas came in a boat and were topped with salsa verde and pickled onions. Put this into a homemade tortilla and you’ve got a great taco but its also quite good on its own.
The brisket order came with a slice of both fatty and lean, which I was happy to see was the default. Both slides were perfectly moist with a peppery bark. There was a big vein of fat running through the fatty slice that could have been a little more rendered but by no means was it disqualifying. Magnificent brisket.
Don’t sleep on the sides, as both the Smoky Sweet potato topped with smoked crema, pepitas, sunflower seeds, and tajin and the Golden Beet Salad served cold were some of the best barbecue sides I’ve had in recent memory.
And especially don’t sleep on The Big Deborah if you’re a fan of oatmeal cream pies. It’s the best dessert I’ve had all year and its a great value for just $4.50.
In last week’s review of Resident Culture Brewing’s barbecue program, I noted how it was helping to expand the top tier of Charlotte barbecue. Well, with Union Barbecue, it has solidly displaced some of the top joints in the city. Behind only Jon G’s Barbecue, for me it is the best barbecue in Charlotte. Seek it out and you won’t be disappointed.
Name: Resident Culture Brewing Date: 8/14/24 Address: x Order: Butcher’s Block Sampler with pork and brisket, red slaw, and hush puppies (link to menu) Pricing: $$
Monk: Resident Culture Brewing made waves last year when they announced they would be hiring pitmaster Edmar Simoes (formerly of Noble Smoke and Sauceman’s) to start their barbecue program out of their South End location. They rolled it out in late 2023 but it wasn’t until summer 2024 that I personally was able to check it out.
And for me, it definitely did not disappoint. While I did initially say it may be in the conversation for best barbecue in town (and possibly in the top 3) more on that in a bit and why that’s not quite the case.
The pork seemingly owed a lot to Edmar’s time at Noble Smoke, and was perfectly smoky with a nice salt and pepper bark chopped in. Of the two meats, I made sure to finish it at that sitting and would be my must-order next time I visit.
The slices of brisket had a fantastic peppery bark you’d want to see on a Texas-style brisket. No choice of fatty or lean was offered, so the three slices were all from the lean side of the brisket. On a side note, the brisket reheated nicely several days later for a leftover sandwich made of the the slices plus some of the pickles and onions offered on the side,
In terms of sides, I appreciated the choice of red or white slaw and the red slaw paired really nicely with the chopped pork and doused in some Eastern Carolina vinegar sauce from the table. The generous helping of hush puppies were also a nice surprise in terms of taste and texture.
Upon further reflection and after getting a little more information in terms of the smoking setup, I would still put Resident Culture Brewing in the top tier of Charlotte barbecue but not quite in the top 3 or even the top 5. Edmar confirmed to me that they use an Ole Hickory gasser that can add wood to get smokiness but in any case I was still impressed by how good the barbecue was. For game days or lunch stops during a South End Brewery crawl, this is certainly some very good barbecue.
We use cookies to optimize our website and our service.
Functional
Always active
The technical storage or access is strictly necessary for the legitimate purpose of enabling the use of a specific service explicitly requested by the subscriber or user, or for the sole purpose of carrying out the transmission of a communication over an electronic communications network.
Preferences
The technical storage or access is necessary for the legitimate purpose of storing preferences that are not requested by the subscriber or user.
Statistics
The technical storage or access that is used exclusively for statistical purposes.The technical storage or access that is used exclusively for anonymous statistical purposes. Without a subpoena, voluntary compliance on the part of your Internet Service Provider, or additional records from a third party, information stored or retrieved for this purpose alone cannot usually be used to identify you.
Marketing
The technical storage or access is required to create user profiles to send advertising, or to track the user on a website or across several websites for similar marketing purposes.
