Garner - Bob Garners book of barbecue: North Carolinas favorite food

1406 Plaza Drive

Winston-Salem, North Carolina 27103

www.blairpub.com

Copyright 2012 by Bob Garner

All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book or portions thereof in any form whatsoever.

For information address
John F. Blair, Publisher, Subsidiary Rights Department,
1406 Plaza Drive, Winston-Salem, North Carolina 27103.

Cover photograph and photographs on pages ii-iii, vi-vii, 15 and 45 Chezley Royster Photography Rubberstamp on cover by Oxlock used under license from Shutterstock.com
Design by Debra Long Hampton

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Garner, Bob, 1946-

Bob Garners book of barbecue : North Carolinas favorite food / by Bob Garner.

p. cm.

Includes index.

ISBN 978-0-89587-574-7 (alk. paper) ISBN 978-0-89587-575-4 (ebook) 1. BarbecuingNorth Carolina. 2. RestaurantsNorth Carolina--Guidebooks. I. Title. II. Title: Book of barbecue.

TX840.B3G362 2012

641.7609756dc23

2012007752

10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

Facing page: At large barbecues, guests often ate standing up. This shot is from Braswell Plantation near Rocky Mount, 1944

Photo by Hemmer, courtesy of the North Carolina State Archives

Country BarbequeGreensboro

Denotes North Carolina Classic barbecue restaurants which have special legacies, longevity, or historical significances as well as outstanding fare and pit-cooking practices.

I want to express my sincere appreciation to the many people who helped make this book possible.

First of all, I am grateful to photographer and writer Keith Barnes of Wilson for his incredibly valuable assistance and suggestions, as well as for several wonderful photographs. Keiths input improved this project immeasurably.

I am indebted to the management and staff of UNC-TV, whose support and enthusiasm through the years for my many barbecue segments and programs, as well as my general restaurant reviews, have helped create an entirely new career niche for me. I am particularly appreciative of the assistance of David Hardy, Scott Marsh, Dennis Beiting, and Michael OConnell with elements of this book. Thanks also to my longtime videographer and friend Mike Oniffrey for the many still photosincluding several reproduced in this volumehe has graciously supplied during our more than twenty years of working together.

A special word of appreciation goes to Kim Cumber of the North Carolina State Archives, Keith Longiotti of the North Carolina Collection at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, Catherine Hoffman of the Davidson County Historical Museum, and Shannon Sweeney of the St. Louis Art Museum.

Thanks to the following persons for valuable assistance with photographs; Woodie Anderson, Michael Pittman, Jes Gearing, Kristin Garcia, Bill Walsh, Bill Stancill, Dwayne Padon, Harry Blair, Will Thorp, Charlie Carden, Randy McNeilly, Amanda Munger, Claire Alley, Marcie Cohen Ferris, Steve Dunning, Don Sturkey, and Mark Johnson.

Finally, I extend my deepest appreciation to my lovely wife, Ruthie, and to my son Everett, both of whom served cheerfully and well as researchers and assistants, and to my children Anna Barrett, Van, Nelson, and Jessica, as well as to all my grandchildren, for their belief in me and their constant support.

Some of what follows was published originally in my first book, North Carolina Barbecue: Flavored by Time, although I have vastly expanded the restaurant section to encompass reviews of 101 barbecue joints across North Carolinaone more than the number included in my 2002 book, Bob Garners Guide to North Carolina Barbecue. New and revised material supplements and brings up to date what I have drawn from those previous books.

What is it about barbecue that makes it as enjoyable to talk about as it is to eatespecially here in North Carolina?

For one thing, remembrances associated with barbecue connect us to a three-hundred-year heritage, both real and romanticized. Since the dawn of the automobile era, opinions about who prepares the best barbecue, like political attitudes, have been a legacy handed down solemnly from one generation to the next in the small towns and farming hamlets of eastern and Piedmont North Carolina. (For some reason, the mountain area has never enjoyed much of a barbecue tradition.)

In earlier days, the names of pioneering barbecue restaurateurs were spoken in reverent tones, usually by the males of the family, and the infrequent meal at one of those hallowed establishments was something like worshipping in church, as eyes closed and heads shook slowly and wordlessly back and forth over the evidence of grace bestowed in the form of peppery chopped pork. In the intervals between such rites, frequent reminiscing no doubt elevated the quality of the barbecue to mythical proportions.

The renewed availability of cars and fuel at the end of World War II made searching for the best barbecue a pastime and a popular topic of conversation for returning servicemen and their families. Another new phenomenon, the drive-in restaurant, made sampling and comparison easy. Joint-hopping patrons soon were served thousands of warm, moist, coleslaw-crowned barbecue sandwiches, wrapped in wax paper and brought outside on trays that clamped onto car windows.

But barbecue and its discourse go back even farther. Wispy blue smoke floating above a coppery brown split pig, hissing and crackling over winking coals, drifts back across generations of small farmers, sharecroppers, merchants, and traders, finally reaching the native inhabitants of northeastern North Carolina and Tidewater Virginia, who almost certainly passed along the art of barbecuing to the settlers. It quickly spread throughout the region. But in the aristocracies of those mountains of conceit, Virginia and South Carolina, barbecuing was often relegated to slaves, its secrets beneath the notice of polite society. However, within North Carolinas vale of humility, barbecuing was with a few exceptions the occupation of farmers and journeymen, white and black, and its arts, methods, and mysteries were endlessly discussed and debated. That tradition has remained. Today, North Carolinians who barbecue for a hobby or profitable sidelineand there are thousands of themwould list conversation and comparing notes at dozens of festivals and cookoffs at the top of their lists of reasons for practicing their hot, smoky art.