Bill's Barbeque Review

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).