Linkdown: 5/3/23 – The Speedy’s Barbecue is Back Edition

Featured

Monk: In “news you absolutely love to see,” Speedy’s Barbecue has reopened in Lexington. Undaunted by the NC DOT’s widening of Highway 8 that killed off Smiley’s Barbecue, Speedy’s has moved about a half mile down the road from their longtime location of 60 years into what formerly housed Tricia’s Catering.

In an interview earlier this year owner Roy Dunn stressed that only the location is changing. Speedy’s will have the same menu, same staff, same prices and same motto — “ Quality, Quantity and Quick service.”

Curb service, a staple of classic Lexington barbecue joints, is open with 13 spots available

Merch is available

Speedy’s Barbecue is now open 11am to 8pm Monday through Saturday at 408 Piedmont Dr Lexington, NC 27295

Native News

Congrats to Little Pigs BBQ of Asheville, who celebrated 60 years open last month

Jon G’s Barbecue makes Eater Carolinas’ list of Essential Restaurants in Charlotte

Paste Magazine reviews the Cheerwine-flavored beer from NoDa Brewing

Congrats to Concord-based SnS Grills for being named “The Best Kettle Style Grill” by Food and Wine in a recent rundown of charcoal grills

WRAL’s best barbecue in Raleigh contains one old but mostly newer places

Non-Native News

Congrats to City Limits Q on the announcement of their upcoming brick and mortar in West Columbia

Aaron Franklin’s latest restaurant Uptown Sports Club is more sports bar than barbecue joint, but it does have some chopped brisket and sausage on the menu in various forms

Amy Mills of 17th Street Barbecue was recently honored back in March

Happy belated birthday to “Black Smoke”

Congrats to Wildwoods BBQ on winning last week’s Brisket King NYC

A little history lesson on Big Joe Bessinger, the “pioneer of SC BBQ”

Content ahead of last week’s NFL Draft in Kansas City: Mitchell Schwartz’s favorite barbecue joints in KC

Linkdown: 7/20/22

Featured

Monk: A fairly wide-ranging state of NC barbecue from News & Observer writer Drew Jackson, who has been very ably covering the barbecue scene in and around Raleigh for the past few years.

Despite the invasive species of brisket coming into the state, there are still a number of places clinging to the NC barbecue tradition, be that eastern whole hog or Lexington-style shoulders (though this story focuses on places east of Durham. Wyatt Dickson, Matt Register, Ronald House (night pitmaster at B’s Barbecue), and Ryan Mitchell are all quoted in the story but of course Sam Jones has the money quote:

“The hard lines that used to exist, that barbecue was either this or it’s not barbecue — that’s over. It used to be, for people in North Carolina, it was either whole hog, or it ain’t (expletive). For 10 million Texans, it’s brisket. As times go on and we’re so much more transient as a society, those lines are blurred.”

Sam Jones

Read more at the link:

Native News

Lewis Donald is no longer involved with Dish and will be focusing his efforts on Sweet Lew’s BBQ and the Carolina Barbecue Festival going forward

Axios Raleigh releases their Triangle barbecue list

Barbecue Center in Lexington is closing for a week later this month for some hard earned rest and relaxation, so plan accordingly

Hillsborough’s Hog Day festival is the oldest barbecue festival in Orange County and this year will officially be part of the Whole Hog Barbecue State Championship

Jon G’s makes the Yelp Charlotte Top 25 Places to Eat along with…JD’s Smokehouse in Rutherford College near Morganton?

A behind-the-scenes follow-up to Jeremy Markovich’s story on B’s Barbecue in Our State Magazine from 2016

Non-Native News

A couple of recent stories where Adrian Miller was interviewed:

Little Pigs BBQ is on this Eater essential restaurants list for Myrtle Beach

Feges BBQ hosted Premier League champions (ugh) Man City on their pre-season US tour

Barbecue sauce beer? Barbecue sauce beer.

Linkdown: 10/6/21

Featured

Recently, friend of the blog John Tanner (of John Tanner’s Barbecue Blog) ate his way across the piedmont of North Carolina while making stops on the NC Historic Barbecue Trail in honor of the late Jim Early. Early was the founder of the North Carolina Barbecue Society and driving force behind the NC Historic Barbecue Trail.

Notably, he makes a stop at our friends at Bar-B-Q King in Lincolnton where he delights in the “hollerin’ orders” system and has a great meal. Follow John’s journey below.

Native News

Ladies and gentlemen, it’s BBQ Bowl Week

Non-Native News

Has Texas Brisket Peaked?

Speaking of brisket, Tales from the Pits unveils their top 5 barbecue spots in Texas

The 38th Annual Collard & BBQ Festival was held this past weekend in Gaston, SC

Husk Barbeque in Greenville, SC closed earlier this week

What you can expect at Virgil’s Real Barbecue in Las Vegas

The legend of Joe Burney

Black Smoke cookout and book signing next Sunday in Denver

Southern Soul’s Firebox BBQ Festival was held this past weekend; notice anything about the photo?

Barbecue Bros Book Club: “Black Smoke: African Americans and the United States of Barbecue” by Adrian Miller

Not that we’re anywhere close to being qualified enough to evaluate books but more so as a public service announcement we will periodically discuss barbecue and barbecue-related books.

Monk: Of the barbecue books we’ve covered over the past few years, “Black Smoke: African Americans and the United States of Barbecue” by James Beard Award-winning author and self-proclaimed “Soul Food Scholar” Adrian Miller may just be the most important of them all. In Miller’s approachable writing style, he looks to correct the decades of whitewashing the Black (and even Native American) contribution to the revered American institution of barbecue in a very detailed and heavily researched fashion.

In the first half of his book, Miller corrects the historical narrative starting with Native Americans who laid the foundations of the process of smoking as well as the apparatus to perform it on. Whereas Native Americans were not widely enslaved, that is unfortunately where the Black contribution begins. Miller traces from the slave origins to the rise of the Black barbecue specialists who sometimes did the work without the credit of white barbecue men all the way to the modern black restaurant entrepreneurs like Henry Perry, the “Barbecue King” of Kansas City, Walter Jones of Jones Bar-B-Q Diner in Marianna, AR, and Jack Patillo of Beaumont, TX.

While the first half deals with the past, the second half explores the current climate as it relates to where African Americans sit in regards to restaurants, sauces, competitions and also looks ahead to the future of black barbecue. Rodney Scott, former Top Chef contestant Kenny Gilbert, and Ed and Ryan Mitchell are profiled in depth while Miller takes a pulse of barbecue recognition today through the efforts of other historians and writers such as Michael Twitty and Howard Conyers. Ultimately, he ends in a hopeful place.

Speaking of in-depth profiles, a minor complaint is that they oftentimes come mid-chapter (some times even mid-sentence) without warning or color coding. Once I became accustomed to how they were used, I found that I usually just skipped past and then came back after I finished the chapter. They are important and oftentimes covered newly discovered Black barbecue figures (such as Marie Jean of Arkansas or John “Doc” Hamilton of Seattle) but I wish they were utilized a little differently.

Bravo to Adrian Miller on writing a comprehensive history of the Black contribution to American barbecue. “Black Smoke” is a must read for not only those interested in barbecue history but also American history.