Bill's Barbeque Review

Bill's Rating System

Bill's Rating System ^{tm, sm, ope}   

      = worth repeated local patronage (e.g. Golden Rule, B'ham Ala.)   

      = worth a detour (e.g., Lexington Barbeque, Lexington, NC)   

      = worth a pilgrimage (e.g., Ollie's, B'ham, Ala.)   

These ratings are based solely on a basic pork barbecue sandwich. The quality of other dishes, service, decor, and ambience may be remarked, but are not factored into the ratings.  Service at a barbeque place is expected to be sincere but erratic even when officious. French fries are not expected to rise above the mediocre, hush puppies are never anything but.  A particular effort has been made to note the availability of pie and beer (please do not combine them), and to ignore the coffee (good coffee is not scheduled to be served in barbeque places until after the opening of the seventh seal). General hygiene is noted but not a factor unless it calls into question the wholesomeness of the sandwich itself.

A Virginian writes... ("Fair and Balanced" Dept.)

Lexington Barbecue

10 US Highway 29 70 S

Lexington, NC 27295

(336) 249-9814

Bill sometimes loses sight of the wisdom of the Romans. De gustibus non est disputandum (Tr: "Order what you want to, then").  In an ecumenical spirit, I herewith publish this blog's first full-blown review by a guest, submitted by my good buddy Fred Schauer.  

Though a Virginian, Fred is fond of barbecue North Carolina style, with coleslaw and all that.  
I steered Fred to Lexington Barbecue because my good lady wife, Ann, who hails from Salisbury, holds that it is North Carolina's finest.  

Fred, maybe even now, holds that the finest North Carolina style barbecue is not to be found in North Carolina but in Williamsburg, Virgina, at Pierce's Pitt [sic] Bar BQ [sic also].  I too am fond of Lexington Barbecue because I find the meat delicious and the coleslaw on top no more trouble to cast aside than the shell underneath an oyster. Fred and his fellow traveler Bobbie Spellman write:

Busy on a Saturday noon, but very efficient and friendly service.  The barbecue is total North Carolina style  -- wet, sweet, and vinegary, and light in color, with no browning on the meat at all.  The barbecue is a bit vinegary for my taste, and the cole slaw a bit sweet (and nothing at all like supermarket or New York cole slaw), but the two together make a wonderful flavor.  

Definitely get the standard chopped pork - the rough chopped is in chunks, and not quite tender enough for that size piece, and I assume the same for the sliced.  But the regular chopped (it is chopped and not pulled) has just the right texture.  And the hush puppies were excellent -- not at all greasy or oily, and a nice crust.  Because it's not near anything (just a nondescript pretty large modern building on the side of the road), the locals seem to view it as a destination, and a good destination it is, if North Carolina barbecue is what you like.  

Definitely worth a stop, even if not worth a journey.

Bottom line: worth a detour, which is what it was for Fred and Bobbie.  A tip of the hat to them.

Contra Sauce

Sauce is a divisive issue.  Barbecue itself is divisive enough a topic ("Memphis!" "Kansas City!" even --oh, what was the third one?-- "Texas!"). And sauce just adds fuel to the fire, after a manner of speaking.

For years I have been an exponent of vinegar-based sauces like the ones I grew up with.  It was from that perspective that I cast my cold, appraising eye upon mustard-based sauces, honey-based sauces, even mayonnaise-based sauces.  As if Which sauce is best? were a real issue. (And, What about rubs? etc etc.)

Then, last week, I had an epiphany.  Our neighbor Tom has not been well and so our thoughtful other neighbor Dick thought it would be nice to have a barbecue at Tom's to welcome him home from the hospital.  Tom had built himself a barbecue pit in his back yard a few years ago, but owing to health issues and one thing or another he'd not had a chance to use it.  So Dick got neighbor Todd, who knows how this is done, to fire it up.  

Todd is so into it that, if you ask him, Who has the best barbecue around?, he won't even pick up on the fact that you're asking What's the best barbecue place around?, where you can go in and buy it.  He assumes you mean Who among the crowd of people he knows cooks the best barbecue?  (He's too modest to answer this question truthfully --he does.)

Unfortunately, Tom couldn't make it but the party went on. There was plenty of meat so Todd gave me a freezer bag full to take home.  (I have been subsisting on it for about a week.)  I forgot to ask for some sauce to go with it, and I discovered, the next day, that we had no barbecue sauce in the house, or even the makings of it.  It is as unusual for a Southerner not to have a jar of barbecue sauce somewhere around as it is for a Jewish person not to have a bottle of Manischewitz in the back of the refrigerator.

Anyway, I was slicing a pickle spear when it struck me: What do I need sauce for?  So I made a sandwich on a toasted bun and put sliced pickle where the sauce would normally go (and slaw, if you run with that depraved crowd).  

"O taste and see that the Lord is good," as the plaque that Ollie McClung had hanging over his pit said (Psalms 34).  And it was good.  So good, there was nothing --nothing-- more I could have done to that sandwich but mess it up.

So, from now on, this will be the Reviewer's acid test: If the barbecue needs anything other than some dill pickle to accent it and moisten it a little, it will be discounted by one full Smiley Face^tm.

If the Reviewer has to ask for pickles, there will be no Smiley Face deduction if the sandwich passes the test just mentioned.  But if there are no pickles, there will be a two Smiley Face deduction (and as you know, Constant Reader, Bill rarely awards as many as two Smiley Faces).

Barbecue done right doesn't need sauce.  More than that, sauce does not improve good barbecue.  Sauce is no substitute for slow-cooking a pig in an outdoor open pit (which is lidded, dummy).  If it is cooked right, barbecue retains enough natural pig juice and savor to cut off any need for sauce.  

Would it count in favor of a steakhouse if somebody told you it had a great lineup of steak sauces? Was it not Escoffier who said that the secret is to pick the best ingredients and do as little as possible to them?  Pork has to be cooked (trichinosis and all that), but, cooked right, pork needs nothing else.  

Besides the dill pickle.  Just like eggs need bacon.  And it takes nothing away from peanut butter to say that it needs jelly.  Or from lox, to say that it needs a bagel. (And tomato. And onion and capers.)

But barbecue does not need sauce (much less, coleslaw).

You May Be a Redneck...

Hickory Pig

Gainesville, Georgia

"...if your business card is a piece of cardboard."  On the other hand, maybe not, if you know, like Phil Beaubien does, that the best barbecue probably ever was made by slaves, using an open pit to slow-cook meat that the lady of the plantation house wouldn't have on her table. The pork at the Hickory Pig is smoked in a cast iron smoker  that is stoked with hickory logs transported in a red wheelbarrow. (Phil turns the meat himself, but on a 90F day he would not knock the $20,000 Southern Pride squirrel-cage-type smoker.) The Hickory Pig was recently designated the #1 barbecue place by paywall-protected Atlanta Magazine.  I myself had been tipped by my good buddy John Tanner.   

John sent me a link to an article in Garden and Gun magazine, and the Hickory Pig, in Gainesville, Georgia, was the closest to me on the list. It was well worth the trip.  The menu on the Wednesday I went was not as extensive as it is Thursdays through Saturdays (closed Sundays and Mondays, and after 3 in the afternoon most days). I had a pulled pork sandwich, and it was so good I ordered a chopped sandwich to compare.  I was graciously given a cup of Brunswick stew by Phil's daughter, and afterwards I was invited to the outside-seating-karaoke-bar outside, to be serenaded in the style of Patsy Cline.  Phil followed with a creditable Hank Williams. 

The sandwiches were moist, garnished with a pickle slice, and lightly sauced. I'll be back for more, like the Australian couple who were there.  They've been regulars for five years.

Overall: 

Fresh Air? Smokin'!

Fresh Air Bar-B-Que

1164 Hwy 42 South

Jackson, GA

770-775-3182

 

What used to be the main drag between Atlanta and Macon goes through Jackson, Georgia, named for President Andrew Jackson.  Don't pay any mind to the PC crowd, who'll claim his enhanced relocation techniques made him some kind of racist genocider  (like they're not what put us on the trail that eventually led to Geronimo).  The Fresh Air Bar-B-Que is now just under an hour south of downtown Atlanta, via I-75 (take exit 212 and follow signs to Jackson).

This is the real deal: an open-pit place dating back to 1929.  Although it has changed hands a few times, you will instantly perceive that barbecue traditions are treasured here.  Oak and hickory, both, are used to slow-cook the meat.  Menu options are few (which is as it should be).  The standard sandwich comes with chopped pork on a bun ($2.55), but for 98 cents more you may explore the "on loaf bread" option.  A pickle spear is served on request.  You can get slaw or stew, but not fries.  And why would you want fries anyway, in this enlightened age?  You've come this far, have another sandwich if you're still hungry.

Open 7 days a week: until 7:30 M-Th, 8:30 F-Sa, and 8pm Su.

^Rating:  

In Memoriam. The King is Dead (as of 2001)

I have been reminded that Ollie's, formerly the omphalos of the barbecue world, its Delphi, its Jerusalem, its city on the hill, is no more. It closed ten years ago, shortly after fleeing to Pelham, Alabama (which is where Thornton's was located -- it too, I assume, has passed).  My sister gave me a bottle of what purports to be Ollie's Barbecue Sauce, a few years ago, so the name survives in some form.  But barbecue is not a sauce and it cannot be bottled.  My good friend John Tanner sent me a photo of the interior, circa 1965.  It was taken just after the 9-0 loss Ollie suffered in the landmark case of Katzenbach v McClung, in US Supreme Court.  That case is noted for its expansive interpretation of the Commerce Clause, and it (rather than section five of the XIVth amendment) was held to be a valid basis for the 1964 Civil Rights Act (the public accommodations part of which Ollie McClung flagrantly violated).  It is sobering and saddening to think that Katzenbach v McClung might soon go the way of Ollie's itself.

Cue Pasa?

'cue

13700 Highway 9

Milton, GA

777-667-0089

'Cue, or Pseu? (And what's with the courier font?) We'll keep an open mind. Sportsbar ambience, stripmall location. Music evenings, beer, wine.  And, for the depraved heart, Grilled Pizza "topped with tomato sauce, mozzarella and your choice of chopped pork, beef, or chicken."  (How's that for "fue"-shun?  I think I might spue ... hey, they started it.)

 They are out of sliced meat so, contra protocol, I order chopped apples and oranges.  Freedom fries are called Hand Cut Russets or something-- TMI or too much info. But as a reviewer I like to know these things, if only for my Pseudetector.

Sandwich ($5.95) served spilling so much meat I had to be warned there was a toothpick in there somewhere holding the thing together. The meat was of a good texture not pureed, and with good outside content. Homemade pickles served on side proved too sweet, as though the cucumber (or 'cuke, geddit?) had been pickled in Karo syrup.

As will happen with chopped meat there was an initially dryish mouth presentation, but soon yielding notes of succulence. Even so, recourse to a vinegar-based sauce set on the table among others was needed.   

The standout here is the fries ($2.95), which are reminiscent of Ollies of yore (speaking of which, the McClungs are rumored to be opening a place near The Point Formerly Known As Clear, on Mobile Bay.). 

Overall: OK

Is there a Southern Pride cooker at the heart of this operation? The last place I asked this I felt about as welcome as government inspector.

Oh, Would I!

Woody's Barbecue

2500 North Point Court

Rating: OK

An unlikely location near North Point Mall. Sports bar motif. Simplest sandwich came on garlic toast. $5.99 with Crinkle fries. Sauces on table. 

Hard to dislike these thick cut slabs of succulent meat with a thin rind of outside char. Your reviewer is a Texas toast aficionado but never thought of BBQ on it.  So, this is what they call Texas BBQ?  Also pulled Carolina style on menu. Count vegetables among sides. What a notion!

 This reviewer boldly asked to see the Smoker.  I was obliged, but also dismayed to be shown a Southern Pride 2700.  The chef told me fours hours was all it took to do the job.  "We are the makers of speed," as Carl Sandberg wrote.  That leaves twenty hours in the day to do what?  Fold napkins?  Anyway, it's like the man said: what's time to a pig?

The meat was unusual.  It was cut as thick as ham but was smoky not salty.  I can't say it was bad.  But would I recommend?

Low and Slow -- Cocoa Beach, Florida

Low and Slow Barbecue Bar and Grill

306 North Orlando

Cocoa Beach, Florida

This is Kelly Slater country, so you Ho-Daddies need to check this out (if that term has acquired connotations unknown to my youth, substitute "Groms and moms need to check this out.") This is decent, slow-smoked pork barbecue they way it's supposed to be but rarely is.  There is a choice of sauces, but the "Mild" looked the most conventional to me and so that's what I had.  No pickle, but nice-enough curlicue fries.

The service is attentive and the outdoor seating is pleasant even in the midst of the cold wave of the century (21st).  I came to this place expecting to be grossed out but the reverse was true (you know which reverse I mean, charitable Reader.)

If you happen to be endlessly summering, wintering or visiting the Kennedy Space Center, you ought to head for the Low and Slow, quick. Even if you are no closer than Orlando, you might want to consider a sidetrip to the coast and, while you're here, grab a sandwich the likes of which you won't likely find at EPCOT, much less the Magic Kingdom.

Rating: 

Sick Pigs, Sick Us?

Have you ever felt like you were caught between Scylla and Charybdis, those two islands in the Bermuda Triangle, where one has a volcano and the other's got a water park that's never been inspected?  I'm talking about my last post ("Healthier Pigs, Sicker Us?") and my point is, if making pigs healthy causes people to get FLESH-EATING BACTERIA!!!! and if au contraire you let the pigs be and they catch the flu which causes people to catch flu too and some of them (mostly here illegally anyway) sicken and die, what do you do?
I'll take my chances with the swine flu every time.  Besides, if you can trust the government, they say you can't catch the swine flu from pigs, even though pigs are swine (Google it if you don't believe me).
Unless-- (and I don't know how big an "unless" this is for you, in your personal situation, which I do not presume to judge) --unless you go doing something you shouldn't do with pigs.  Such as not using hand sanitizer after you load up your smoker, or things of that nature.

Healthier pigs, sicker us?

Pigs in this country get better health care than we do (up to a point, that is).  Nobody particularly wants to eat pork from a sick pig --but that's why you slow cook 'em.  (Anyhow, treyf is treyf, and all the antibiotics in the world ain't gonna change that.)

Feeding antibiotics to pigs is contributing bigtime to MRSA, which claims 18,000 human lives a year in the U.S. --more than AIDS does.  MRSA is methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus, and it is spreading, according to the Union of Concerned Barbeque-fancying Scientists, as confirmed by a recent National Institute of Hog-eaters Heath study.  You've heard of super-bugs, and FLESH EATING BACTERIA!!!! --this is where they come from.  

Lord, have MRSA.  We don't want it.