May 23, 2005
On N.C. Barbecue, East and West Don't Meet -- Except to Argue
Bill Establishing State Festival Roils Battle Between East, West
By Manuel Roig-Franzia
Washington Post Staff Writer

SILER CITY, N.C. -- Contempt spread across Jerry Bledsoe's face. Well,
kind of a theatrically exaggerated version of contempt, but contempt
nonetheless.

The gloppy, gristly, just plain gross-looking pile of vinegary,
eastern-style pork barbecue on the foam plate before him did not look
pretty. Bledsoe's foil, Dennis Rogers -- a newspaper columnist, but
more important, North Carolina's self-appointed Oracle of the Holy Grub
-- shifted a bit in his seat. A subpar batch of barbecue is tough to
find in North Carolina, but the old debating buddies had stumbled onto
one, and Bledsoe had him.

"All right, let's get this imitation barbecue out of the way," Bledsoe
said.

And so it began, as it has countless times before. Bledsoe and Rogers
have been puffing up the barbecue feud between eastern North Carolina
and western North Carolina for decades. Bledsoe -- a former newspaper
columnist turned best-selling crime book author -- is undeniably Mr.
Western-Style, extolling the virtues of melty-tender pork shoulders
glazed with a ketchup-based sauce. Rogers is adamantly Mr.
Eastern-Style, pontificating about the vinegar-heavy morsels of whole
hog favored Down East along North Carolina's coast.

Rogers and Bledsoe don't need an excuse to roll out their barbecue
sideshow, but the North Carolina legislature just handed them a doozy
anyway. A state representative thought he would quietly ease a bill
through declaring the barbecue festival in the western-style capital of
Lexington, N.C. -- a city that claims to have the world's highest per
capita concentration of barbecue consumption, with 17 restaurants for
20,000 residents -- to be the state's official barbecue festival.
Quietly? Yeah, right. Not as long as Dennis Rogers has access to ink by
the barrel.

"People who would put ketchup in the sauce they feed to innocent
children are capable of most anything," Rogers told his readers in the
Raleigh News & Observer after word leaked about the barbecue festival
bill. "Let the word go forth from this time and place that we, the
Eastern North Carolina purveyors of pure barbecue, will not be roadkill
for our western kin."

That anyone would care about such silliness as designating an official
state barbecue festival says a lot about North Carolina. Other states
may content themselves with a single dominant barbecue identity --
South Carolina seems perfectly happy as the mustard-based capital of
the universe, Tennessee appears satisfied with being identified
primarily as the home of the sweet, tomatoey Memphis-style barbecue.
But North Carolina is torn asunder, its split barbecue personality
embedded in the state's cultural landscape.

The state's official apparatus is so exercised about the rivalry that
North Carolina's tourism agency sponsored an Internet poll to divine
the true favorite. Eastern-style won the vote, but the westerners
refused to concede.

Adding the official barbecue festival contretemps into the swirl almost
made it too easy for the hair-trigger barbecue battlers to start
blasting away again.

"I guess it's the ultimate pork-barreling," said state Rep. Jerry
Dockham, a Republican who co-sponsored the bill that would give the
barbecue festival in his home county the state's imprimatur.

Dockham, surprised a bit at the derision of the most blustery
eastern-style types, might want to reconsider his sources of political
advice in the future. His barbecue festival bill, which is stuck in
committee, was suggested by a fourth-grade class in Davidson County,
where he lives. The fourth-graders, and Dockham for that matter,
apparently underestimated their eastern counterparts, who have already
managed to shame him into watering down the measure, making it an
"official food festival," rather than an official barbecue festival.

Truth be told, there is a good bit of mythology enveloping the whole
regional barbecue rivalry. The loudest of the barbecue talkers would
have you believe that regional styles never cross. North Carolina's
well-held myth says that the state's dueling barbecue styles are
separated by the "Gnat Line," an invisible barrier that separates the
sandy soil that attracted gnats to the east and the denser rocky and
clay soil of the Piedmont Region to the west.

But the Gnat Line has been breached. West is creeping east, and east is
creeping west, though not always in the smoothest of fashions. When a
man had the temerity to open an eastern-style barbecue joint in
Lexington last year, the newspapers called him "a heretic." He got fed
up with the business and leased the place to an employee. The new guy
got wise: He serves only western style now.

"People take this really seriously," Dockham said.

The eastern-style advocates can rightly stake a claim as North
Carolina's original barbecue. They smoke an entire hog, or cook it over
electrical coils, and slather the meat in a sauce made from vinegar --
usually apple cider -- black pepper and red pepper flakes.

The western style, according to legend, developed in the 1920s in
Lexington, where cash-strapped country folk bought barbecue sold from
tents outside the courthouse. The meat came from the cheapest part of
the pig -- the shoulder. The sauce was sweeter, with heavy doses of
sugar and ketchup, some black pepper and only a dash of vinegar. The
kings of modern western-style barbecue almost all trace their
bloodlines to those original tent-selling entrepreneurs, tracking their
ancestry with the same attention as thoroughbred horse breeders.

Rogers and Bledsoe, happy to grouse about their shared obsession,
picked at the offerings in Smithfield's, a small North Carolina chain,
one recent afternoon. The restaurant is in a sort of demilitarized zone
of barbecue, plopped down in Siler City, about as deep an encroachment
for eastern-style as it gets in western territory. The denizens of the
fictional Mayberry, N.C., were always talking about shopping in Siler
City, and Frances Bavier, who played Aunt Bee, settled here after "The
Andy Griffith Show" went off the air. Bledsoe figures "Andy Griffith"
captured small-town North Carolina life better than almost anyone, with
one glaring exception: "They didn't eat barbecue."

Bledsoe, who suggested Smithfield's as a meeting place for his barbecue
arm-wrestling match with Rogers -- perhaps knowing the chain might not
be the best example of eastern-style -- was able to counter his pal
with "the mother church" of western barbecue, up in Greensboro.

Sweet hickory smoke announces the location of Stamey's in Greensboro,
long before its wood-frame walls and peaked skylight -- evoking a
sacred space -- come into view. Bledsoe eats his barbecue in the truck
with his dog, Zoe, so he can take in the hickory aroma pouring from the
smoker out back. Inside the furnace-hot brick smokehouse, sweaty men
walk through a thick haze to pile trays holding dozens of pork
shoulders into 10 brick ovens. There are no meat thermometers, only a
poke of a long fork, to test whether 10 hours of smoking were enough,
or just a few more minutes will be needed. "This is an art," Bledsoe
said, almost reverently, and on this, even Rogers cannot argue.

Chip Stamey's grandfather sold barbecue out of a tent in Lexington
before moving to the spot in Greensboro where his grandson now goes
through 10,000 to 12,000 pounds of pork shoulders a week. The methods
are mostly the same, but even an institution such as Stamey's can
evolve: Its pork shoulders don't come from the pig-raising capital of
North Carolina anymore, arriving instead from Pennsylvania.

Bledsoe and Rogers have evolved, too. They aren't so militant anymore
-- except in print, of course. Rogers, the champion of eastern-style
bluster, confesses that if he were limited to a single barbecue style,
it wouldn't come from eastern North Carolina, it would come from
Memphis. And Bledsoe, the blusterer-in-chief of the west, reveals that
his favorite barbecue joint is in the east: the sublime Skylight Inn in
little Ayden, N.C., where famous owner Pete Jones flecks his chopped
barbecue with cracklin' and fries his irresistible corn bread to a
decadent crisp in pork fat.

There's never a winner in their feud, but there's never a loser either.
"There ain't no bad barbecue," Rogers admits. But that won't stop their
battling. That's because just about everyone here can agree on one
thing: Arguing barbecue is almost as good as eating it.

Thankye, Mr. Pepper!!!

Respectful and a little bit HONGRY now,

Guv Bob

"MrPepper11" > wrote in message
oups.com...
> May 23, 2005
> On N.C. Barbecue, East and West Don't Meet -- Except to
Argue
> Bill Establishing State Festival Roils Battle Between
East, West
> By Manuel Roig-Franzia
> Washington Post Staff Writer
>
> SILER CITY, N.C. -- Contempt spread across Jerry Bledsoe's
face. Well,
> kind of a theatrically exaggerated version of contempt,
but contempt
> nonetheless.
>
> The gloppy, gristly, just plain gross-looking pile of
vinegary,
> eastern-style pork barbecue on the foam plate before him
did not look
> pretty. Bledsoe's foil, Dennis Rogers -- a newspaper
columnist, but
> more important, North Carolina's self-appointed Oracle of
the Holy Grub
> -- shifted a bit in his seat. A subpar batch of barbecue
is tough to
> find in North Carolina, but the old debating buddies had
stumbled onto
> one, and Bledsoe had him.
>
> "All right, let's get this imitation barbecue out of the
way," Bledsoe
> said.
>
> And so it began, as it has countless times before. Bledsoe
and Rogers
> have been puffing up the barbecue feud between eastern
North Carolina
> and western North Carolina for decades. Bledsoe -- a
former newspaper
> columnist turned best-selling crime book author -- is
undeniably Mr.
> Western-Style, extolling the virtues of melty-tender pork
shoulders
> glazed with a ketchup-based sauce. Rogers is adamantly Mr.
> Eastern-Style, pontificating about the vinegar-heavy
morsels of whole
> hog favored Down East along North Carolina's coast.
>
> Rogers and Bledsoe don't need an excuse to roll out their
barbecue
> sideshow, but the North Carolina legislature just handed
them a doozy
> anyway. A state representative thought he would quietly
ease a bill
> through declaring the barbecue festival in the
western-style capital of
> Lexington, N.C. -- a city that claims to have the world's
highest per
> capita concentration of barbecue consumption, with 17
restaurants for
> 20,000 residents -- to be the state's official barbecue
festival.
> Quietly? Yeah, right. Not as long as Dennis Rogers has
access to ink by
> the barrel.
>
> "People who would put ketchup in the sauce they feed to
innocent
> children are capable of most anything," Rogers told his
readers in the
> Raleigh News & Observer after word leaked about the
barbecue festival
> bill. "Let the word go forth from this time and place that
we, the
> Eastern North Carolina purveyors of pure barbecue, will
not be roadkill
> for our western kin."
>
> That anyone would care about such silliness as designating
an official
> state barbecue festival says a lot about North Carolina.
Other states
> may content themselves with a single dominant barbecue
identity --
> South Carolina seems perfectly happy as the mustard-based
capital of
> the universe, Tennessee appears satisfied with being
identified
> primarily as the home of the sweet, tomatoey Memphis-style
barbecue.
> But North Carolina is torn asunder, its split barbecue
personality
> embedded in the state's cultural landscape.
>
> The state's official apparatus is so exercised about the
rivalry that
> North Carolina's tourism agency sponsored an Internet poll
to divine
> the true favorite. Eastern-style won the vote, but the
westerners
> refused to concede.
>
> Adding the official barbecue festival contretemps into the
swirl almost
> made it too easy for the hair-trigger barbecue battlers to
start
> blasting away again.
>
> "I guess it's the ultimate pork-barreling," said state
Rep. Jerry
> Dockham, a Republican who co-sponsored the bill that would
give the
> barbecue festival in his home county the state's
imprimatur.
>
> Dockham, surprised a bit at the derision of the most
blustery
> eastern-style types, might want to reconsider his sources
of political
> advice in the future. His barbecue festival bill, which is
stuck in
> committee, was suggested by a fourth-grade class in
Davidson County,
> where he lives. The fourth-graders, and Dockham for that
matter,
> apparently underestimated their eastern counterparts, who
have already
> managed to shame him into watering down the measure,
making it an
> "official food festival," rather than an official barbecue
festival.
>
> Truth be told, there is a good bit of mythology enveloping
the whole
> regional barbecue rivalry. The loudest of the barbecue
talkers would
> have you believe that regional styles never cross. North
Carolina's
> well-held myth says that the state's dueling barbecue
styles are
> separated by the "Gnat Line," an invisible barrier that
separates the
> sandy soil that attracted gnats to the east and the denser
rocky and
> clay soil of the Piedmont Region to the west.
>
> But the Gnat Line has been breached. West is creeping
east, and east is
> creeping west, though not always in the smoothest of
fashions. When a
> man had the temerity to open an eastern-style barbecue
joint in
> Lexington last year, the newspapers called him "a
heretic." He got fed
> up with the business and leased the place to an employee.
The new guy
> got wise: He serves only western style now.
>
> "People take this really seriously," Dockham said.
>
> The eastern-style advocates can rightly stake a claim as
North
> Carolina's original barbecue. They smoke an entire hog, or
cook it over
> electrical coils, and slather the meat in a sauce made
from vinegar --
> usually apple cider -- black pepper and red pepper flakes.
>
> The western style, according to legend, developed in the
1920s in
> Lexington, where cash-strapped country folk bought
barbecue sold from
> tents outside the courthouse. The meat came from the
cheapest part of
> the pig -- the shoulder. The sauce was sweeter, with heavy
doses of
> sugar and ketchup, some black pepper and only a dash of
vinegar. The
> kings of modern western-style barbecue almost all trace
their
> bloodlines to those original tent-selling entrepreneurs,
tracking their
> ancestry with the same attention as thoroughbred horse
breeders.
>
> Rogers and Bledsoe, happy to grouse about their shared
obsession,
> picked at the offerings in Smithfield's, a small North
Carolina chain,
> one recent afternoon. The restaurant is in a sort of
demilitarized zone
> of barbecue, plopped down in Siler City, about as deep an
encroachment
> for eastern-style as it gets in western territory. The
denizens of the
> fictional Mayberry, N.C., were always talking about
shopping in Siler
> City, and Frances Bavier, who played Aunt Bee, settled
here after "The
> Andy Griffith Show" went off the air. Bledsoe figures
"Andy Griffith"
> captured small-town North Carolina life better than almost
anyone, with
> one glaring exception: "They didn't eat barbecue."
>
> Bledsoe, who suggested Smithfield's as a meeting place for
his barbecue
> arm-wrestling match with Rogers -- perhaps knowing the
chain might not
> be the best example of eastern-style -- was able to
counter his pal
> with "the mother church" of western barbecue, up in
Greensboro.
>
> Sweet hickory smoke announces the location of Stamey's in
Greensboro,
> long before its wood-frame walls and peaked skylight --
evoking a
> sacred space -- come into view. Bledsoe eats his barbecue
in the truck
> with his dog, Zoe, so he can take in the hickory aroma
pouring from the
> smoker out back. Inside the furnace-hot brick smokehouse,
sweaty men
> walk through a thick haze to pile trays holding dozens of
pork
> shoulders into 10 brick ovens. There are no meat
thermometers, only a
> poke of a long fork, to test whether 10 hours of smoking
were enough,
> or just a few more minutes will be needed. "This is an
art," Bledsoe
> said, almost reverently, and on this, even Rogers cannot
argue.
>
> Chip Stamey's grandfather sold barbecue out of a tent in
Lexington
> before moving to the spot in Greensboro where his grandson
now goes
> through 10,000 to 12,000 pounds of pork shoulders a week.
The methods
> are mostly the same, but even an institution such as
Stamey's can
> evolve: Its pork shoulders don't come from the pig-raising
capital of
> North Carolina anymore, arriving instead from
Pennsylvania.
>
> Bledsoe and Rogers have evolved, too. They aren't so
militant anymore
> -- except in print, of course. Rogers, the champion of
eastern-style
> bluster, confesses that if he were limited to a single
barbecue style,
> it wouldn't come from eastern North Carolina, it would
come from
> Memphis. And Bledsoe, the blusterer-in-chief of the west,
reveals that
> his favorite barbecue joint is in the east: the sublime
Skylight Inn in
> little Ayden, N.C., where famous owner Pete Jones flecks
his chopped
> barbecue with cracklin' and fries his irresistible corn
bread to a
> decadent crisp in pork fat.
>
> There's never a winner in their feud, but there's never a
loser either.
> "There ain't no bad barbecue," Rogers admits. But that
won't stop their
> battling. That's because just about everyone here can
agree on one
> thing: Arguing barbecue is almost as good as eating it.
>

"MrPepper11" > wrote in message
oups.com...
> May 23, 2005
> On N.C. Barbecue, East and West Don't Meet -- Except to Argue
> Bill Establishing State Festival Roils Battle Between East, West
> By Manuel Roig-Franzia
> Washington Post Staff Writer
>
> SILER CITY, N.C. -- Contempt spread across Jerry Bledsoe's face. Well,
> kind of a theatrically exaggerated version of contempt, but contempt
> nonetheless.
>
> The gloppy, gristly, just plain gross-looking pile of vinegary,
> eastern-style pork barbecue on the foam plate before him did not look
> pretty. Bledsoe's foil, Dennis Rogers -- a newspaper columnist, but
> more important, North Carolina's self-appointed Oracle of the Holy Grub
> -- shifted a bit in his seat. A subpar batch of barbecue is tough to
> find in North Carolina, but the old debating buddies had stumbled onto
> one, and Bledsoe had him.
>
> "All right, let's get this imitation barbecue out of the way," Bledsoe
> said.
>
> And so it began, as it has countless times before. Bledsoe and Rogers
> have been puffing up the barbecue feud between eastern North Carolina
> and western North Carolina for decades. Bledsoe -- a former newspaper
> columnist turned best-selling crime book author -- is undeniably Mr.
> Western-Style, extolling the virtues of melty-tender pork shoulders
> glazed with a ketchup-based sauce. Rogers is adamantly Mr.
> Eastern-Style, pontificating about the vinegar-heavy morsels of whole
> hog favored Down East along North Carolina's coast.
>
> Rogers and Bledsoe don't need an excuse to roll out their barbecue
> sideshow, but the North Carolina legislature just handed them a doozy
> anyway. A state representative thought he would quietly ease a bill
> through declaring the barbecue festival in the western-style capital of
> Lexington, N.C. -- a city that claims to have the world's highest per
> capita concentration of barbecue consumption, with 17 restaurants for
> 20,000 residents -- to be the state's official barbecue festival.
> Quietly? Yeah, right. Not as long as Dennis Rogers has access to ink by
> the barrel.
>
> "People who would put ketchup in the sauce they feed to innocent
> children are capable of most anything," Rogers told his readers in the
> Raleigh News & Observer after word leaked about the barbecue festival
> bill. "Let the word go forth from this time and place that we, the
> Eastern North Carolina purveyors of pure barbecue, will not be roadkill
> for our western kin."
>
> That anyone would care about such silliness as designating an official
> state barbecue festival says a lot about North Carolina. Other states
> may content themselves with a single dominant barbecue identity --
> South Carolina seems perfectly happy as the mustard-based capital of
> the universe, Tennessee appears satisfied with being identified
> primarily as the home of the sweet, tomatoey Memphis-style barbecue.
> But North Carolina is torn asunder, its split barbecue personality
> embedded in the state's cultural landscape.
>
> The state's official apparatus is so exercised about the rivalry that
> North Carolina's tourism agency sponsored an Internet poll to divine
> the true favorite. Eastern-style won the vote, but the westerners
> refused to concede.
>
> Adding the official barbecue festival contretemps into the swirl almost
> made it too easy for the hair-trigger barbecue battlers to start
> blasting away again.
>
> "I guess it's the ultimate pork-barreling," said state Rep. Jerry
> Dockham, a Republican who co-sponsored the bill that would give the
> barbecue festival in his home county the state's imprimatur.
>
> Dockham, surprised a bit at the derision of the most blustery
> eastern-style types, might want to reconsider his sources of political
> advice in the future. His barbecue festival bill, which is stuck in
> committee, was suggested by a fourth-grade class in Davidson County,
> where he lives. The fourth-graders, and Dockham for that matter,
> apparently underestimated their eastern counterparts, who have already
> managed to shame him into watering down the measure, making it an
> "official food festival," rather than an official barbecue festival.
>
> Truth be told, there is a good bit of mythology enveloping the whole
> regional barbecue rivalry. The loudest of the barbecue talkers would
> have you believe that regional styles never cross. North Carolina's
> well-held myth says that the state's dueling barbecue styles are
> separated by the "Gnat Line," an invisible barrier that separates the
> sandy soil that attracted gnats to the east and the denser rocky and
> clay soil of the Piedmont Region to the west.
>
> But the Gnat Line has been breached. West is creeping east, and east is
> creeping west, though not always in the smoothest of fashions. When a
> man had the temerity to open an eastern-style barbecue joint in
> Lexington last year, the newspapers called him "a heretic." He got fed
> up with the business and leased the place to an employee. The new guy
> got wise: He serves only western style now.
>
> "People take this really seriously," Dockham said.
>
> The eastern-style advocates can rightly stake a claim as North
> Carolina's original barbecue. They smoke an entire hog, or cook it over
> electrical coils, and slather the meat in a sauce made from vinegar --
> usually apple cider -- black pepper and red pepper flakes.
>
> The western style, according to legend, developed in the 1920s in
> Lexington, where cash-strapped country folk bought barbecue sold from
> tents outside the courthouse. The meat came from the cheapest part of
> the pig -- the shoulder. The sauce was sweeter, with heavy doses of
> sugar and ketchup, some black pepper and only a dash of vinegar. The
> kings of modern western-style barbecue almost all trace their
> bloodlines to those original tent-selling entrepreneurs, tracking their
> ancestry with the same attention as thoroughbred horse breeders.
>
> Rogers and Bledsoe, happy to grouse about their shared obsession,
> picked at the offerings in Smithfield's, a small North Carolina chain,
> one recent afternoon. The restaurant is in a sort of demilitarized zone
> of barbecue, plopped down in Siler City, about as deep an encroachment
> for eastern-style as it gets in western territory. The denizens of the
> fictional Mayberry, N.C., were always talking about shopping in Siler
> City, and Frances Bavier, who played Aunt Bee, settled here after "The
> Andy Griffith Show" went off the air. Bledsoe figures "Andy Griffith"
> captured small-town North Carolina life better than almost anyone, with
> one glaring exception: "They didn't eat barbecue."
>
> Bledsoe, who suggested Smithfield's as a meeting place for his barbecue
> arm-wrestling match with Rogers -- perhaps knowing the chain might not
> be the best example of eastern-style -- was able to counter his pal
> with "the mother church" of western barbecue, up in Greensboro.
>
> Sweet hickory smoke announces the location of Stamey's in Greensboro,
> long before its wood-frame walls and peaked skylight -- evoking a
> sacred space -- come into view. Bledsoe eats his barbecue in the truck
> with his dog, Zoe, so he can take in the hickory aroma pouring from the
> smoker out back. Inside the furnace-hot brick smokehouse, sweaty men
> walk through a thick haze to pile trays holding dozens of pork
> shoulders into 10 brick ovens. There are no meat thermometers, only a
> poke of a long fork, to test whether 10 hours of smoking were enough,
> or just a few more minutes will be needed. "This is an art," Bledsoe
> said, almost reverently, and on this, even Rogers cannot argue.
>
> Chip Stamey's grandfather sold barbecue out of a tent in Lexington
> before moving to the spot in Greensboro where his grandson now goes
> through 10,000 to 12,000 pounds of pork shoulders a week. The methods
> are mostly the same, but even an institution such as Stamey's can
> evolve: Its pork shoulders don't come from the pig-raising capital of
> North Carolina anymore, arriving instead from Pennsylvania.
>
> Bledsoe and Rogers have evolved, too. They aren't so militant anymore
> -- except in print, of course. Rogers, the champion of eastern-style
> bluster, confesses that if he were limited to a single barbecue style,
> it wouldn't come from eastern North Carolina, it would come from
> Memphis. And Bledsoe, the blusterer-in-chief of the west, reveals that
> his favorite barbecue joint is in the east: the sublime Skylight Inn in
> little Ayden, N.C., where famous owner Pete Jones flecks his chopped
> barbecue with cracklin' and fries his irresistible corn bread to a
> decadent crisp in pork fat.
>
> There's never a winner in their feud, but there's never a loser either.
> "There ain't no bad barbecue," Rogers admits. But that won't stop their
> battling. That's because just about everyone here can agree on one
> thing: Arguing barbecue is almost as good as eating it.
>
They're arguing about bad or worse... once one has had southern Georgia
barbecue, the Carolina stuff is as appealing as putting Arby's barbecue
sauce on McRibs!
~ signed, A Virginia ham lover who doesn't ask for barbecue above
the 33rd Parallel

>They're arguing about bad or worse... once one has had southern Georgia
>barbecue, the Carolina stuff is as appealing as putting Arby's barbecue
>sauce on McRibs!
> ~ signed, A Virginia ham lover who doesn't ask for barbecue above
>the 33rd Parallel
>
>

Ok, I'm curious. I've been eating bbq in S. Ga. for 30+ years and have
never really seen a common theme. (Except for Brunswick stew). What
sort of technique/sauce are you talking about?

Thanks,
Bubba

>
>
>
>


--
You wanna measure, or you wanna cook?

Eastern NC barbecue looks like it has been chewed up and spat out.
Jackie
"Bubba" > wrote in message ...


They're arguing about bad or worse... once one has had southern Georgia
barbecue, the Carolina stuff is as appealing as putting Arby's barbecue
sauce on McRibs!
~ signed, A Virginia ham lover who doesn't ask for barbecue above
the 33rd Parallel

Ok, I'm curious. I've been eating bbq in S. Ga. for 30+ years and have never really seen a common theme. (Except for Brunswick stew). What sort of technique/sauce are you talking about?

Thanks,
Bubba






--
You wanna measure, or you wanna cook?

Bubba wrote:
> Ok, I'm curious. I've been eating bbq in S. Ga. for 30+ years and have
> never really seen a common theme. (Except for Brunswick stew). What
> sort of technique/sauce are you talking about?

Ever ate at Country's in Columbus, GA (or Auburn, Montgomery or Troy,
AL)? There's a unique seasoning in their sauce that I've yet to find
anywhere else. It's addictive.

Donna

If anyone's near Hickory, NC this weekend, The Greater Hickory Smoke BBQ
Fest is being held starting Friday at 11am at LP Frans Stadium near Hickory
airport. Seeya there!

http://www.greaterhickorysmoke.com/

"zambi" > wrote in message
. ..
| If anyone's near Hickory, NC this weekend, The Greater Hickory Smoke BBQ
| Fest is being held starting Friday at 11am at LP Frans Stadium near
Hickory
| airport. Seeya there!
|
| http://www.greaterhickorysmoke.com/

I live near Hickory and trust me you 'can't get here from here' perhaps
there'll be enough smoke (and no fire engines) that I can find it. <g>

Thanks

On 23 May 2005 12:01:47 -0700, in rec.food.cooking, MrPepper11 wrote:

>
>"All right, let's get this imitation barbecue out of the way," Bledsoe
>said.
>
>And so it began, as it has countless times before. Bledsoe and Rogers
>have been puffing up the barbecue feud between eastern North Carolina
>and western North Carolina for decades. Bledsoe -- a former newspaper
>columnist turned best-selling crime book author -- is undeniably Mr.
>Western-Style, extolling the virtues of melty-tender pork shoulders
>glazed with a ketchup-based sauce.

Ah, this explains why the barbecue I've had in Burnsville in Yancey County
and places nearby has been a sweet ketchup based gravy, but when I went to
a well known bbq place at Chimney Rock their 'North Carolina Barbecue' was
vinegar based - although that is still western N.C.

I'm on Bledsoe's side.

DOug
--
Doug Weller -- exorcise the demon to reply
Doug & Helen's Dogs http://www.dougandhelen.com
A Director and Moderator of The Hall of Ma'at http://www.hallofmaat.com
Doug's Archaeology Site: http://www.ramtops.co.uk

Easy to find. You'll see the sign for APT, LP Frans Stadium off 321. Pizza
Hut's on the corner.

"Paul Ely" > wrote in message
> the Carolina stuff is as appealing as putting Arby's
barbecue
> sauce on McRibs!

mmmmmm MMM!!! Now yew are tawking my langwidge, Mr. B!!

Guv "And don't hawg the Horsey Sauce" BoB

"Doug Weller" > wrote
in message
...
>..., but when I went to
> a well known bbq place at Chimney Rock their 'North
Carolina Barbecue' was
> vinegar based - although that is still western N.C.

What's the name of that place in Chimbly Rock?

I went to the Hickory BBQ fest, and was real impressed with "The Checkered
Pig" up yonder in Martinsville, VA. Shelby, NC is an up n comer, too!

Sorry to the folks in Nashville, TN. Your stuff was rancid road kill covered
with sweet sauce. Beans were Hunt's outa the can. Didn't screw up the slice
of white bread, though....

Shelby, NC is an up n comer, too!

Bridges's BBQ, I wager?

"zambi" > wrote in message
.. .
>I went to the Hickory BBQ fest, and was real impressed with "The Checkered
>Pig" up yonder in Martinsville, VA. Shelby, NC is an up n comer, too!
>
> Sorry to the folks in Nashville, TN. Your stuff was rancid road kill
> covered with sweet sauce. Beans were Hunt's outa the can. Didn't screw up
> the slice of white bread, though....
>

I live on the border between the 2 kinds of NC BBQ and so hear a lot of this
conflict. It is really silly, and some people take it so seriously! The fact
is that either kind, well done, is delicious. Unfortunately they are rarely
done really well. Even if a BBQ joint has good BBQ, the sides are likely to
be sub-par. Then there's the unfortunate "tradition" of making the ambience
as low-down as possible. Styrofoam plates, plastic forks, cheap napkins,
vinyl tablecloths - yuck! C'mon people, if you put so much effort into your
Q the least you can do is provide a reasonably pleasant environement to eat
it in!


--
Peter Aitken
Visit my recipe and kitchen myths page at www.pgacon.com/cooking.htm

Thanks for report Zambi!!!! I have got to find a
gen-yu-wine home-made recipe for east and west NC barbeque.
I done tried ever thang in the stores here and they all
taste like they wuz squeezed outta Dairy Queen ketchup
packets. (Nothing against Dairy Queen - jest calling a spade
a spade.)

Guv "Hongry" BoB

"zambi" > wrote in message
.. .
> I went to the Hickory BBQ fest, and was real impressed
with "The Checkered
> Pig" up yonder in Martinsville, VA. Shelby, NC is an up n
comer, too!
>
> Sorry to the folks in Nashville, TN. Your stuff was rancid
road kill covered
> with sweet sauce. Beans were Hunt's outa the can. Didn't
screw up the slice
> of white bread, though....
>
>

>"the mother church" of western barbecue, up in Greensboro.
>
>Sweet hickory smoke announces the location of Stamey's in Greensboro,
>long before its wood-frame walls and peaked skylight -- evoking a
>sacred space -- come into view.

I sat in front of Miss E---- Stamey in high school math, in Greensboro
NC in the late 70s. Everybody knew who she was - people would point her
out - "you know, Stamey's barbecue! That's her family!" And listeners
would go silent with awe at the grandeur. She was a perfectly sweet
person although we had nothing in common and therefore never had a
conversation.

20 years later I brought my California native hubby to NC for a visit.
Mom took us out to Stamey's, because hubby loves barbecue. Of course Q
is very different in the Bay area... more on this later. The waitress
brought us a menu, and my husband asked her: "what are hush puppies?"

Now my mother, a native of Virginia, doesn't embarrass easily. She
married a rather colorful Lebanese American college professor, and
she's pretty colorful herself. She prides herself on dealing with
cultural differences with aplomb. But she was aghast. Poor guy, how was
he supposed to know what hush puppies are?

He might as well have worn a flashing neon sign on his head that said
"NOT FROM THE SOUTH". All I could do was laugh. My Georgia grandmother
(married a Virginia mountain preacher) taught me about hush puppies
when I was a girl. When you're having a fish fry and the hound dogs are
whining, you slip 'em some fried cornbread batter and say "hush,
puppy." That's Grandma's story anyway. But why is a Berkeley boy
supposed to know that?

I don't particularly care for western style Q, even though I do have a
personal connection to the "mother church". Hubby wasn't impressed
either. I only had Eastern style once, on the way to the beach, and
liked it lots better. At Stamey's even the cole slaw is made with that
sweet BBQ sauce. No, it's not my thing.

The other thing hubby noticed was that all the servers, cooks and
counter people were white. You never see white people making or serving
barbecue in the Bay area.

When I go to Greensboro (which happens about once a decade now) I
prefer to eat at the K&W cafeteria. This is the only place I can find
that still makes good old Southern food. There was a country restaurant
in an old house way out in the farmlands when I was a teenager that
served southern food "Family Style", but by now Greensboro's food scene
has become utterly corporatized, at least on the Southern food front.
Besides Stamey's, which seems to be still independent, there's nothing
Southern to eat that I could find that isn't pre-frozen in individual
portions. I'm sure there are nice upscale places, too. Ya'll in
Greensboro go on ahead and tell us all about it. But I sure had a hard
time finding good inexpensive down home Southern food the last couple
of times I went there.

Leila
Grimsley High School Class of 1979

On Tue, 31 May 2005 11:31:02 GMT, in rec.food.cooking, Guv Bob wrote:

>"Doug Weller" > wrote
>in message
.. .
>>..., but when I went to
>> a well known bbq place at Chimney Rock their 'North
>Carolina Barbecue' was
>> vinegar based - although that is still western N.C.
>
>What's the name of that place in Chimbly Rock?

I think it is the Cajun Pig, not sure though.

Doug
--
Doug Weller -- exorcise the demon to reply
Doug & Helen's Dogs http://www.dougandhelen.com
A Director and Moderator of The Hall of Ma'at http://www.hallofmaat.com
Doug's Archaeology Site: http://www.ramtops.co.uk

In article . com>,
"Leila" > wrote:

> >"the mother church" of western barbecue, up in Greensboro.
> >
> >Sweet hickory smoke announces the location of Stamey's in Greensboro,
> >long before its wood-frame walls and peaked skylight -- evoking a
> >sacred space -- come into view.
>
> I sat in front of Miss E---- Stamey in high school math, in Greensboro
> NC in the late 70s. Everybody knew who she was - people would point her
> out - "you know, Stamey's barbecue! That's her family!" And listeners
> would go silent with awe at the grandeur. She was a perfectly sweet
> person although we had nothing in common and therefore never had a
> conversation.

I had a Stamey as a student in my classes at UNC Greensboro 8 years ago.
Probably a cousin of Miss E----.
>
> 20 years later I brought my California native hubby to NC for a visit.
> Mom took us out to Stamey's, because hubby loves barbecue. Of course Q
> is very different in the Bay area... more on this later. The waitress
> brought us a menu, and my husband asked her: "what are hush puppies?"
>
> Now my mother, a native of Virginia, doesn't embarrass easily. She
> married a rather colorful Lebanese American college professor, and
> she's pretty colorful herself. She prides herself on dealing with
> cultural differences with aplomb. But she was aghast. Poor guy, how was
> he supposed to know what hush puppies are?

Oh, my! I'm sure he must have been the talk of Stamey's staff for weeks
after that.
>
> I don't particularly care for western style Q, even though I do have a
> personal connection to the "mother church". Hubby wasn't impressed
> either. I only had Eastern style once, on the way to the beach, and
> liked it lots better. At Stamey's even the cole slaw is made with that
> sweet BBQ sauce. No, it's not my thing.

SO and I were under the impression that Lexington BBQ #1 was the true
mother church of Western BBQ. We'd make pilgrimages down there a couple
times a year.

I actually like both styles, although I have a hard time dealing with
chopped Q that is more puréed than chopped. Our theory is that they had
to chop barbecue that fine to help out folks with poor teeth. We had
Eastern Q at Wilber's in Goldsboro, which was good. Bullock's BBQ in
Durham is on the ragged edge of East vs. West--a good compromise. I
don't like mayonnaise-based coleslaw, so Stamey's slaw is fine by me.
>
> When I go to Greensboro (which happens about once a decade now) I
> prefer to eat at the K&W cafeteria. This is the only place I can find
> that still makes good old Southern food. There was a country restaurant
> in an old house way out in the farmlands when I was a teenager that
> served southern food "Family Style", but by now Greensboro's food scene
> has become utterly corporatized, at least on the Southern food front.
> Besides Stamey's, which seems to be still independent, there's nothing
> Southern to eat that I could find that isn't pre-frozen in individual
> portions. I'm sure there are nice upscale places, too. Ya'll in
> Greensboro go on ahead and tell us all about it. But I sure had a hard
> time finding good inexpensive down home Southern food the last couple
> of times I went there.
>
I think I went to K&W once in the years we lived in Greensboro.
Naturally, I went with some of my church cronies, but not on a Sunday.
The Southern food in town was pretty corporate when we lived there, but
we frequented Vietnamese places more often.

So when is the tabbouli-spoonbread-haggis brood coming to Seattle?

Cindy, still pining for Saigon Cuisine's soft-shell crab

--
C.J. Fuller

Delete the obvious to email me