Rodney Scott

Linkdown: 6/25/14

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– While the newest incarnation of the Hornets opted not to use Alexander Julian as a free consultant to help design their new uniforms, he designed the original ones in exchange for barbecue

Julian was already a standout in the design world because of his “Colours” collection of men’s clothes when Shinn asked him in the 1980s to come up with the Hornets’ original uniforms. Julian said he would do it if Shinn would ship five pounds of barbecue to his house in Connecticut every month – “Carolina caviar,” as Julian called it.

“I had no idea that an expansion team uniform was going to sell as much as it did,” Julian said. “I was really dumb. I didn’t know what I was giving up. I normally get a five percent royalty. The reports I saw was that they sold over $200 million worth of stuff. So I traded $10 million for some barbecue. George got rich, and I got fat.”

– Stamey’s was featured on the Cooking Channel show “Man Fire Food” (via bbqboard) yesterday

– Well this sounds promising:

– Yet another list of best barbecue joints in America, this time from Smart Travel list (via Huffington Post). At least it’s pretty accurate for NC, both in the description of east vs. Lexington styles as well as the joints they choose

Where to Get It: Our resident North Carolinian editor says Allen & Son in Chapel Hill is quintessential, with large brick pits out back and telltale checkered oilcloth on the tables inside. Skylight Inn in Ayden earns Southern Living‘s high praises for its whole-hog approach. Locals laud Lexington Barbecue‘s wood-smoked, ketchup-laced pork shoulder; a roll to heap it on will cost you $0.17 extra, and some Cheerwine (a super-carbonated cherry soda native to the area) is the only proper accompaniment.

– From a few weeks back, Daniel Vaughn (aka bbqsnob) had the good fortune to explore whole hog barbecue through tasting it from Ed Mitchell, Samuel Jones, and Rodney Scott at The Big Apple BBQ event earlier this month

– Robert Moss explains smokers across the south in this article for Serious Eats (via)

– 8 Things to Eat at a Charlotte Knights game includes two barbecue items from Queen City Q – a pulled pork potato and a pulled pork sandwich

– Q4Fun figures out which beers from NoDa Brewing pairs best with various barbecue dishes

  • Pulled pork
  • Mustard sauce – Ramble on Red – counterbalances the acidity – competing flavors 
  • Vinegar sauce – Ramble on Red or Cavu 
  • KC style sauce – Hop Drop ‘n Roll 

– This Fourth of July, feel free to go with slaw as a side dish at your cookout

“Slaw is universal,” says John Shelton Reed, author of “Holy Smoke: The Big Book of North Carolina Barbecue .” “Slaw is part of the deal unless you ask not to have it.”

– Well this looks amazing: John Lewis of la Barbecue and Rodney Scott of Scott’s Bar-B-Que to smoke barbecue together in Charleston; too bad its on a Sunday and during the World Cup Final

Linkdown: 5/21/14

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– Texas really isn’t taking TripAdvisor’s list that listed them #3 behind Georgia and NC barbecue very well; no really, they aren’t taking it well at all

– The Charlotte Observer Archive Twitter account (@Observer Archive) has this archive photo about Stanton’s Barbeque and Fish Camp Fly-In Restaurant in Bennettsville, SC (across the NC/SC state line from Laurinburg) that is still in existence today:

– Trucking Info is definitely not my usual source of barbecue content, but here’s an article entitled “I Came to an Engine Teardown and Learned About Barbecue”

Inspired by Shell’s relationship with the BBQ Pitmasters show on Destination America, the barbeque pit will be used for industry and customer events. The pit, which can cook enough barbeque to feed 100 or more people, was built by champion barbeque grillers, Pitt’s and Spitt’s.

Houston-based, Pitt’s and Spitt’s has more than 75 years of combined experience designing and fabricating custom competition barbeque trailers, grills, pits and smokers. The Pitt’s & Spitt’s World Champion Cooking Team has won over 30 barbecue and cooking awards, and Shell Rotella is a sponsor of the team this year.

– “The Best Barbecue I’ve Ever Had Was Made by a Bunch of Damn Yankees”

– Alex and Zoe Ranucci of Ranucci’s Big Butt BBQ, Grand Championship-winning team of the 2013 Q City Championship, were featured in the first issue of a new magazine called Barbecue America

– Bill Spoon’s is featured on this list of “great barbecue restaurants” from USA Today as part of their National Barbecue Month coverage

– Both Rodney Scott and the SC Barbecue Trail get a mention in this article entitled “SC barbecue business gets a boost from social media” (h/t bbqboard)

– The Blue Ridge BBQ & Music Festival is looking for between 300 and 500 volunteers for June 13 and 14

– Elliot Moss’ previous barbecue concept, Buxton Hill, is dead. Long live his new concept, Buxton *Hall*

Moss’ thing is whole-hog, wood-fired barbecue. “He’s bringing a really artisanal, traditional approach to barbecue that he feels has been missing from a lot of barbecue in the south,” said Irani.

Many Asheville barbecue restaurants, including 12 Bones, Luella’s and Little Pigs Bar-B-Que, use smokers fired with both gas and wood, a system that makes it easier for cooks to control time and temperature while cooking.

– Charlotte-based food writer Keia Mastrianni accompanied two restaurateurs from San Francisco on an epic Carolinas barbecue tour (research for their now-opened barbecue restaurant Smokestack) which included Lexington #1, Wilber’s, B’s Barbecue, Scott’s Barbecue, and several more; part 1 and part 2

– The Charlotte couple behind The Great NC BBQ Map gets interviewed in Charlotte Magazine this month and shares a few more details about the map coming next month

AA: You promised to be comprehensive. That’s a big statement.

AAF: We have talked about the national chains and statewide chains and things like that. And definitely statewide chains are going to be on there, but we’re leaning toward not doing the nationwide ones because that feels a little different and it’s not so much about North Carolina history and heritage and everything.

Linkdown: 4/16/14

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– The Charlotte Observer has a list of various road trips for Spring (including one for beer), and here is a 10-stop NC barbecue tour which includes some not-so-obvious choices

– Speaking of road trips, the latest reviews from Marie, Let’s Eat!’s NC barbecue roadtrip: The Barbecue Center in Lexington, Allen & Son Barbeque in Chapel Hill, Hursey’s in Burlington, and Short Sugar’s in Reidsville

– Bar-B-Q King in Charlotte is included as part of the history of Wilkinson Boulevard from the March 2014 issue of Charlotte Magazine

Few places are more familiar on Wilkinson than Bar-B-Q King. Follow the curved arrow of its sign, and most days you’ll see a lot full of cars. Behind the counter, a static buzz fills the room as co-owner Gus Karapanos flips on the speaker system.

“Same one we’ve had for 40 years,” he says. “People love to hear it.”  The sign, too, has been the same since Karapanos’s uncles opened the place back in 1959. Except for a few days after Hurricane Hugo knocked it down in 1989, that sign and the billboard–sized, ice-cream-eating Inuit at Dairy Queen next door have remained constants in a changing neighborhood. 

– Ed Mitchell, Sam Jones, and Rodney Scott are the pitmasters from the Carolinas in this year’s Big Apple Barbecue Block party in June

– I think I’ve seen a version of this list before, but in case you missed it Lexington comes in at #4 in this list of 10 best barbecue cities (h/t Rudy)

4. Lexington, North Carolina

Pork is the game in Lexington, a small town just an hour’s drive northeast of Charlotte, where a regional favorite is the wood-smoked pork shoulder, coarsely chopped and topped by a mostly vinegar based sauce -0 those who know their way around a Lexington grill often order it with some outside brown, which means more flavorful extra bark from the meat) and sometimes extra dip, which is just the word for the thinner sauce. Another Lexington trademark is red slaw, coleslaw that’s swapped out the mayo for BBQ sauce. There’s a lot to the Lexington scene, which is why the city throws the annual Barbecue Festival to celebrate it. For the regular season, Lexington Barbecue #1, established in 1962 and better known by locals as the Honeymonk, is the quintessential Lexington joint, widely hailed as the best in the business, always happy to help a diner out with a big plate of pork and some Cheerwine.

– Speaking of Lexington, this year’s BBQ Capital Cook-Off is April 25-26

– The Charlotte Smokeoff at Unknown Brewing is this Saturday in Charlotte:

Linkdown: 4/9/14

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– The first three reviews from Marie, Let’s Eat!’s epic NC barbecue roadtrip last month have been posted: Red Bridges in Shelby, Wink’s King in Salisbury, and Lexington #1

– As beef prices rise, more and more Texas pitmasters are turning to pork

– Ranucci’s Big Butt BBQ, Grand Champions of the 2013 Q-City BBQ Competition, is hoping to crowdsource a portion of their new food truck

– Thrillist’s list of best barbecue in Atlanta

– The latest Carolina ‘Cue Restaurant featured in Our State Magazine is Bum’s Restaurant in Ayden

– JJ’s Red Hots is having a Bacon Beer & BBQ dinner on April 24 as part of NC Beer Month

– A short article on SC’s Barbecue Trail (via bbqboard)

– Mission BBQ, a military and first responder-focused Baltimore-based chain created by an Under Armour founder, opened earlier this week in Wilmington

– Another (more promising sounding) coastal barbecue restaurant, Southport Smokehouse BBQ, is opening sometime this month:

Natives of Lexington – a town some would argue is North Carolina’s barbecue ground zero – the Hemphills’ restaurant specialized in pork shoulders cooked over hickory logs “imported” from Davidson County. The pits, Elaine Hemphill said, were modeled after those at the famous Lexington Barbecue along Interstate 85 Business.

…

A trio of restaurateurs, Troy Knight, Jim Sparks and Ryan Salley (who will serve as pitmaster) has taken over the spot and are returning it to its roots. They’ll offer brisket, ribs and pulled pork with both Lexington-style and vinegar sauces cooked over hickory. Salley said he’ll mostly be smoking shoulders, a hallmark of the upstate variety, but would occasionally go whole hog, the more traditional method in the Eastern region.

– Scott’s BBQ is having their annual picnic on April 19 and oh how I wish I could make it back down to Hemingway for it