OooWee BBQ (food truck) – Charlotte, NC

November 4, 2013August 1, 2014 / Barbecue Bros / 1 Comment

Name: OooWee BBQ (food truck)
Date: 10/19/13
Address: N/A
Order: Chopped BBQ pork with slaw and mac and cheese (link to menu)
Price: ~$8

OooWee BBQ is a relatively new food truck around town that has been popping up at Food Truck Friday and NoDa Brewing, among other locations. On this night, they were one of a few trucks at the first Brewz Arts & Music Festival, a new music festival at the NC Music Factory featuring of Montreal, Kool AD, The Whigs, and The Love Language, among many other local Charlotte bands and DJ’s.

Picking the truck was a no-brainer but unfortunately, on this night the chopped pork was completely dry as if it had been sitting under a heating lamp most of the day (speculating here, but it was about 7pm at night). Sauce helped make it a little more palatable, but even still it was still pretty dry. My mac and cheese was also fairly dry and the mayo-based slaw wasn’t much to write home about either.

Everyone has an off day so perhaps that was the case here. I would be interested in checking OooWee BBQ out again on a different day in a different circumstance. I might even be tempted to try the called the curiously named “barbecue sundae” just to see what it’s all about. In any case, you may spot OooWee’s bright yellow food truck around town at various food truck rallies or events but like the color yellow implies, I would suggest proceeding with caution.

-Monk

Ratings:
Atmosphere/Ambiance – N/A
Pork – 1 Hogs
Sides – 2 Hogs
Overall – 1.5 Hogs

Scott’s Bar-B-Que – Hemingway, SC

October 28, 2013September 9, 2014 / Barbecue Bros / Leave a comment

Name: Scott’s Bar-B-Que
Date: 10/9/13
Address: 2734 Hemingway Hwy, Hemingway, SC 29554
Order: Pulled pork plate with baked beans and cole slaw (link to menu)
Price: ~$10

Despite the state’s reputation for mustard-based barbecue, South Carolina is actually home to 4 distinct styles of barbecue sauce – mustard, vinegar and pepper (a la Eastern NC), light tomato (a la Lexington), and heavy tomato (a la Georgia) – a point of pride for South Carolinia, who also claims to be the birthplace of barbecue (I’ve read differently but that’s for another post).

Scott’s Bar-B-Que cooks whole hog over wood coals (there was a huge wood pile out back next to the smokehouse) and uses a vinegar and pepper sauce, very similar to eastern NC barbecue likely due to the town’s proximity to NC (just over an hour’s drive). Both the joint and it’s pitmaster Rodney Scott have received a lot of plaudits and praise in recent years, between stories in major outlets like Time and the New York Times as well as food personality Andrew Zimmern calling it his favorite barbecue joint in the US. So lucky for me, on the way home from a recent mini-vacation in Charleston, Mrs. Monk was game for taking the scenic route back home and making a stop into Scott’s.

Scott’s was started in a convenience store/gas station in 1972 by Rodney’s dad just a year after his birth and has since been taken over by Rodney, who cooked his first hog at age 11. The current setup is still part convenience store, part barbecue joint. Scattered among the shelves of convenience store items and walls are various framed magazine articles and awards for Scott’s, but in a “I guess I’ll just stick this over here” manner. There are a couple of plastic tables and a small bar at which patrons can eat, but it was empty when we arrived at 11:30am on a Wednesday.

Once seated, our food orders were brought to us in no-frills styrofoam to-go boxes with a side of barbecue sauce. The pulled pork was coarsely chopped strands with visible pepper flakes and only slightly warm, but it still had a nice texture and tasted fantastic. I have to say, the barbecue at Scott’s certainly compares very favorably with the best eastern NC joints I’ve had, albeit a little spicier (especially if you add the table sauce also brought out with the boxes).

There was not much to talk about when it came to the sides. Both the baked beans and the coleslaw were nothing special. My plate came with two slices of white bread, which you don’t see all the time but was kind of a nice touch and I gladly used them to make sandwiches (they also helped cut the spiciness of the barbecue). Really, the pork was the star of the show here.

Even as a NC barbecue diehard, I have to admit that Scott’s was a true roadside barbecue experience. Speaking of experiences, the bathroom situation around back and upstairs was certainly one that Mrs. Monk won’t soon forget – I think “scary” was a word used to describe the ordeal – but at least she was a fan of the barbecue. In any case, its location in Hemingway (pop. 573) , about an hour east west of Myrtle Beach and an hour forty-five north west of Charleston, doesn’t make it the most convenient joint to try but Scott’s Bar-B-Que is well worth any detour if you are in the coastal plains of South Carolina. Highly recommended.

-Monk

Ratings:
Atmosphere/Ambiance – 4.5 Hogs
Pork – 4.5 Hogs
Sides – 2 Hogs
Overall – 4.5 Hogs

Maurice’s Piggie Park – West Columbia, SC

October 21, 2013August 1, 2014 / Barbecue Bros / Leave a comment

Name: Maurice’s Piggie Park
Date: 10/6/13
Address: 1600 Charleston Highway, West Columbia, SC 29169
Order: #2 Little Pig – BBQ pork, Carolina Hash over rice, homemade coleslaw, hushpuppies and dinner roll (link to menu)
Price: ~$13

If you’ve ever traveled in South Carolina, you may have seen billboards for Maurice’s Piggie Park. They are kind of hard to miss, littered over the major highways in and around Columbia with a photo displaying a barbecue sandwich with an unappetizing orange-ish brown-ish portion of barbecue. While this is mostly due to some unfortunate food photography, the mustard sauce can also be to blame. It is no secret that the Barbecue Bros are no fans of mustard in our barbecue but on a Sunday afternoon driving on our way to Charleston for a mini-vacation, Mrs. Monk and I took our chances.

The West Columbia location off Charleston Highway used to be a drive-in restaurant but nowadays the covered awnings are just used for normal parking though they do add somewhat of a retro touch along with the giant sign out front. Maurice’s has a fast-casual set up – you order at the counter and the food is brought to you sometime later. I ordered the Little Pig combo, made my sweet tea, and then sat down with Mrs. Monk and took in the ambiance.

Now, I do have quite a bit of experience with SC mustard-based barbecue, having spent a few semesters in college doing an engineering co-op and living in Greenville, SC. I enjoyed it at time but have since refined my palate quite a bit barbecue-wise. So this particular Sunday, at this particular Maurice’s, what was the verdict? Yea…I’m just not that into SC barbecue anymore. In fact, I’m now firmly in the “mustard doesn’t belong near barbecue” camp. The texture and chop of the barbecue was pretty okay but it was ruined by the golden mustardy sauce.

The hush puppies were not sweet, thus they were not for me. The coleslaw was mayo-based and average. But what I really want to talk about is the barbecue hash on rice. This is apparently the classic barbecue side in South Carolina and is kind of a meat stew-slash-gravy served on white rice. What’s actually in the gravy? You probably don’t want to know. I kind of liked it at first but the more I had, the more I was convinced it was not something that should accompany barbecue. It’s just…weird.

There are 14 locations of Maurice’s Piggie Park in central SC, but if you find your taste in barbecue to be similar to the Barbecue Bros (or at least me), you really don’t need to bother.

-Monk

Ratings:
Atmosphere/Ambiance – 2.5 Hogs
Pork – 2 Hogs
Sides – 2 Hogs
Overall – 2 Hogs

Red Bridges Barbecue Lodge – Shelby, NC

October 10, 2013August 1, 2014 / Barbecue Bros / Leave a comment

Name: Red Bridges Barbecue Lodge
Date: 9/28/13
Address: 2000 E Dixon Blvd, Shelby, NC 28150
Order: Monk – small barbecue tray, Cheerwine; Speedy: jumbo barbecue plate with red slaw, hush puppies, fries, and onion rings, Cheerwine (link to menu)
Price: $24

Monk: Heading to the Sigur Rós concert in Asheville afforded myself and Speedy another opportunity to hit up one of our favorite barbecue joints of all time, Red Bridges Barbecue Lodge in Shelby, NC.

Speedy: Monk and I have stopped by Red Bridges pretty frequently over the past few years (usually on the way to and from concerts in Asheville) and assumed this would be a slam dunk 5-hog review, as every experience in the past has been perfect.

Monk: However, that wasn’t exactly the case this time around for our official visit. Red Bridges is your classic old school barbecue joint located just off highway 74 and they have been serving the greater Shelby area for 67 years (60 in the current location). Speedy and I entered and sat ourselves and like always we were approached by the waitress immediately upon sitting down. As is our M.O. when it’s available, we each ordered a Cheerwine for our drink (unfortunately in a can and not from the fountain).

Speedy: Like an amateur, Monk had a full breakfast with the in-laws before lunch, so only ordered the small barbecue tray.

Monk: Hey now…

Speedy: I, on the other hand, had been fasting since the previous evening in preparation for the barbecue feast, so I ordered the jumbo barbecue plate which consisted of chopped pork, red slaw, hush puppies, fries, and onion rings. The food was brought out shortly thereafter, although not as promptly as we had remembered in previous visits.

Monk: Look, before we get into it I do want to caveat that it was all very good. Still, we don’t get paid the big bucks not to nitpick.

Speedy: Wait, you’re getting paid?

Monk: We’ll talk about that later…anyways, starting with the chopped pork, it was a little coarser chop than both Speedy and I would prefer – which is different from our past visits. And maybe it could have had just a touch more smoke – again, different from our past visits.

Speedy: I was actually ok with the amount of smoke in the pork. I would like to note, however, that the pork always comes with a good bit of outside brown, even if you don’t specifically ask for it.

Monk: Very true. As for sides, both the oblong hush puppies and red slaw were spot on for a Lexington-style joint.

Speedy: The onion rings were fine but the fries were not good, and I only ended up eating three of them. One thing that has always irked me about Red Bridges is that they have Frank’s Hot Sauce on the table – why not stock Texas Pete, a Winston-Salem product?

Monk: Speaking of sauce, the table dip seemed to be a little thicker than we’ve noticed in the past and lacked tang.

Speedy: You may be reading this review and thinking that we didn’t enjoy our visit. We assure you, that is not the case. Red Bridges is still in our top 5 North Carolina barbecue joints. It’s just that this particular visit didn’t quite live up to their unusually high standards. Still, this meal was better than 95% of barbecue joints out there.

Monk: We still have no trouble recommending Red Bridges Barbecue Lodge to anyone and everyone looking for proper barbecue and we will stop by there every chance we get. Let’s just hope this visit was an anomaly instead of the start of a trend.

Ratings:
Atmosphere/ambiance – 4.5 hogs
Pork – 4.5 hogs
Sides – 4.5 hogs
Overall – 4.5 hogs