The Barbecue Center

Linkdown: 6/29/16

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– Lewis Barbecue finally opened in Charleston yesterday, and here’s a look at the four custom-built smokers that were built in Texas and shipped to SC

– Destination BBQ attended the friends and family event and posted on the experience, which is “unlike what those of us born and raised in SC are accustomed to in a BBQ restaurant”

– Charlotte Five discovers the greatness of The Smoke Pit that we’ve known about for a few months, calling it “worth the wait”

Showing up to The Smoke Pit on Saturday means many guests will be standing in a line that starts at the register and trails out the door where people wait patiently to move forward. Some guests say that on one Saturday, they stood in a line that wrapped around the building. With so many daily visitors, certain items may run out and are then placed on a sign below the menu, which some visitors peer at from the line.

– This Sunday, the Plaza Midwood Pig Pickn’ will be held at the Moo & Brew parking lot

– After Grant’s wholehearted defense of Georgia BBQ last week, Robert Moss weighs in as well

– Speaking of which, Grant makes the rounds to Paradise Country Bar-B-Que in Milledgeville and Andy’s BBQ in Eatonton, which he finds to be “every bit as good” as Allen & Son Barbeque in Chapel Hill (they happen to use a similar vinegar and pepper sauce)

– Destination BBQ continues their SC BBQ roadtrip series with I-20, which passes through three of the four barbecue regions in the state; side note – these entries are incredibly thorough and well worth a read if you haven’t checked them out yet

– From last week, Daniel Vaughn draws parallels between Hawaii’s kalua pig and Texas barbacoa

-Jim Shahin of the Washington Post breaks down the latest barbecue books, including the reprinting of Robb Walsh’s Legends of Texas Barbecue Cookbook

– The Barbecue Center in Lexington has a new sign to replace the previous one of 55 years

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:

The Barbecue Center – Lexington, NC

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Name: The Barbecue Center
Date: 8/8/13
Address: 900 N Main St., Lexington, NC 27292
Order: Chopped pork plate with fries, slaw, hush puppies and a Cheerwine (link to menu)
Price: $10.14

Monk: On our way to fly out of Greensboro for our annual guys trip, Speedy and I took the opportunity to check out a joint in Lexington that is on the NC Historic Barbecue Trail but which neither of us had been to – The Barbecue Center. I personally must have passed within a half mile of it literally hundreds of times heading to and from Charlotte without knowing it was there. Nevertheless, I was excited.

Speedy: Like Monk, I had never been though I’d heard tale of some locals claiming it as their favorite joint in town, which in Lexington is a big deal. (I later found out the reason I never went growing up: when telling Mama Speedy about my lunch locale, she replied with a scoff, “why’d you go there? Monk’s is right around the corner.”)

Pulling in, things looked really good, as there’s a large smokehouse outside and piles of hickory wood. The large smokehouse was not active upon our noon arrival. Additionally, there was hickory wood outside of the kitchen in the main building, which was going, as there was a strong, glorious smoke smell present as we entered the building.

Monk: In addition to the smell, you could see thin veil of smoke wafting in the dining room, so I was definitely encouraged. We grabbed a small two-person booth as the lunch rush started to come in and before too long the waitress had taken our order. As is standard, we each ordered a chopped pork plate (with extra outside brown) that came with fries, slaw, and hush puppies and of course, a Cheerwine to top it all off.

Speedy: The meal looked fantastic – exactly as a barbecue meal should. I bit into the pork and noticed a definite smoke flavor. It was also perfectly tender. I think my biggest problem was with the dip, which seemed a little heavy on the ketchup, making it sweeter than I like.

Monk: The outside brown was very present in the pork, which I agree was very good. The oblong hush puppies were really good and almost as sweet as I like them to be, though not quite. The red slaw wasn’t quite as tangy as I normally like, and I know Speedy had some issues.

Speedy: My love of red slaw is well documented around these parts, but again, the dip really held it back for me. The cabbage was chopped perfectly, but I was just overwhelmed by the sweetness of the dip. Was it better than mayo based cole slaw? Of course. But it just wasn’t up to what I expected in the town of Lexington.

Monk: All in all, I was glad we were able to finally check out The Barbecue Center. It’s former owner Sonny Conrad (who recently passed away in June) was a barbecue icon and was one of six restaurant owners who started The Barbecue Festival in Lexington, the largest one-day festival in the state of NC. Conrad was so iconic, in fact, that he always presented the first barbecue sandwich of the festival to the mayor of Lexington. As for the food itself…

Speedy: It was very good. In fact, if The Barbecue Center were in Charlotte, I’d probably go eat there all the time. But it’s not in Charlotte, and there’s a higher standard in Lexington. At the end of the day, Mama Speedy was right – why waste your time when Monk’s place is just around the corner?

Ratings:
Atmosphere/Ambiance – 4 Hogs
Pork – 4 Hogs
Sides – 3.5 Hogs
Overall – 4 Hogs

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