Charlotte Hornets

Charlotte Barbecue News from the First Quarter of 2022

/ Barbecue Bros / Leave a comment

Monk: The Charlotte barbecue scene, along with the entire restaurant industry, remains in flux. Longtime Belmont staple Buddy’s BBQ closed in February after 25 years. A second location of Noble Smoke opened in Optimist Hall. The Carolina Barbecue Festival was announced for May and has a chance to put Charlotte on the map. However, no barbecue boom appears on the horizon for Charlotte anytime soon. Here’s a roundup of news from the past 3 months.

January

1/2 Big Tiny’s BBQ expands its hours in the new year

1/3 By popular demand the pizza collab by Jon G’s Barbecue and Salud continued into January

1/4 Noble Smoke is the only barbecue restaurant on Charlotte Magazine’s annual list of the 50 best restaurants in Charlotte

1/10 RayNathan’s celebrates 3 years open

1/20 Garren of Jon G’s Barbecue profiled on the Ministers of Smoke Instagram page

1/21 A fun story from Charlotte Magazine on how Chapel Hill-born fashion designer Alexander Julian got paid in barbecue for designing the original Charlotte Hornets jerseys

February

2/7 Buddy’s BBQ in Belmont closed after 25 years

2/9 Cornelius-based Barvecue has raised $600 million thus far

2/9 The latest barbecue list from Only In Your State includes Jon G’s Barbecue

2/23 Lewis Donald of Sweet Lew’s BBQ announces the Carolina Barbecue Festival to be held May 22 at Camp North End in Charlotte

2/27 Congrats to Garren and Kelly from Jon G’s, who 2 years ago on this date closed on the former Barbee’s Barbecue location, which they would open in June 2020 just a few months into the pandemic

March

3/12 Actor Eric Wareheim made it all the way from LA to Jon G’s Barbecue for a Barbecue Saturday

3/14 Noble Smoke‘s second location at Optimist Hall opens; it was originally scheduled to open on 3/2

3/22 Noble Smoke is involved in a bit of controversy when a miscommunication between its landlord and a neighboring business kicks off a brouhaha

3/24 Noble Smoke and Jim Noble’s official response. As of this writing I have not seen whether an agreement has been reached.

Linkdown: 1/26/22

/ Barbecue Bros / Leave a comment

A fun story from Charlotte Magazine on how Chapel Hill-born fashion designer Alexander Julian got paid in barbecue for designing the original Charlotte Hornets jerseys.

According to Juilian (also known for the UNC Chapel Hill argyle and being the costume designer for Robert Altman’s The Player), “I had this idea: What good is money if you can’t buy barbecue? I call it Carolina caviar. … I said, ‘I’ll give you ownership of the design for five pounds of Carolina barbecue a month.’ A (writer) asked me to sum up the whole experience. I said, ‘Well, George (Shinn) got rich, and I got fat. I traded $10 million worth of royalties for a gut.'”

Getting paid in barbecue, that’s the dream. Well played Alexander Julian, well played.

Native News

Garren of Jon G’s Barbecue featured on the Minsters of Smoke Instagram page

…speaking of which, Jon G’s is popping up at Triple C Brewing in Charlotte tonight

Sweet Lew’s has a new “Just Peachy” barbecue sauce available through the end of the month

Non-Native News

John Tanner checks out Ruthie’s All Day, The Federalist Pig, and DCity Smokehouse for an upcoming Smoke Sheet article

Adrian Miller is interviewed for this Atlas Obscura piece on the Southern Foodways Alliance oral history project

The Oak Texas BBQ makes its debut in Kemah, TX; they were previously based in Nashville and were Speedy’s favorites

The Texas Monthly BBQ Fest moves to Lockhart for this year’s edition

Tips on selecting the best wood for barbecue

Nice merch special from Fox Bros Bar-B-Q: two mystery shirts and a mystery hat for $35

Linkdown: 9/30/15

/ Barbecue Bros / Leave a comment

– This year’s 86th Annual Mallard Creek Barbecue will be on Thursday, October 22

– Queen City Q and the Hornets enter into a partnership for the upcoming NBA season

As part of the multi-year agreement, Queen City Q will operate a pair of branded concession stands at Time Warner Cable Arena, one on the lower level and one on the upper level, allowing fans to enjoy some of the area’s best and most popular barbecue while attending events in the building.  Queen City Q products will also be featured on the arena’s suite menus.

– Charlotte Agenda makes one of their bold and click-baity proclamations that “the best barbecue in Charlotte just might be sold by Boy Scouts”

-The second Charlotte-area location of Smoke opens in Stonecrest next week

– Steve Raichlen has some barbecue secrets from Ed Mitchell in the HuffPo

– Marie, Let’s Eat! visits the newer, larger Character’s Famouse BBQ in Adairsville, GA – you might recognize its pitmaster Michael Character from BBQ Pitmasters

– NOLA Smokehouse in New Orleans closes this Saturday

– Johnny Fugitt has 7 recipes he must try from the 12 Bones cookbook

– Robert Moss’ list of the south’s best barbecue beverages rightly includes Cheerwine

– Some details on a pre-Barbecue Festival shindig:

-Speaking of Lexington, Brad Livengood of The Lexington Dispatch has some barbecue history regarding pirates I previously had not come across

Pirates loved to party, and there was nothing like a good pig picking to make a party atmosphere. So they devised a process based upon an apparatus made of green wood. It was a rack of sorts, to hold the pig’s carcass as it was being smoked. The rack was placed over a pit filled with charred embers to slowly simmer the meat. They called the process, the boucan. Its practitioners were soon known as boucaneers. The often used synonym for pirate, buccaneer, comes from this method of cooking barbecue. I don’t know if there was hickory wood involved, but it surely was smoked and pit-cooked. So we lovers of barbecue in Davidson County have something in common with Blackbeard and his ilk, and it’s just a short walk down the pages of history from the tastebuds of some cutthroat pirate to our love of a chopped sandwich today.

– Lucky Peach says there are 14 (!?) styles of american barbecue

Linkdown: 7/1/15

/ Barbecue Bros / Leave a comment

– Chef Michael Symon is apparently trying to invent Cleveland-style barbecue

According to Symon, Cleveland-style barbecue will pay homage to the city’s Eastern European population with kielbasa and sauerkraut. As for the meat, it will be smoked over applewood “because of the large amount of apple orchards in northeastern Ohio.” It will also include its own signature style of barbecue sauce. Symon reveals:

“Because ketchup is made in Pittsburgh, we would never serve a tomato-based sauce in Cleveland. Cleveland’s known for its mustard, and I wanted to use that as the base of our sauce. But instead of the classic, Carolina, yellow-mustard BBQ sauce, I’m using Cleveland’s famous brown mustard, Bertman’s.”

– Another week, another list: First We Feast’s 29 Bucket List BBQ Joints for Every Smoked-Meat Connoisseur, though this list has quite the pedigree for its contributors ranging from reknowned pitmasters to barbecue editors to James Beard Award-winning authors

– Food and Wine has 7 tips for the backyard barbecuer including my favorite: pick pork

– Might want to steer clear of Tarheel Q in Lexington for awhile after nearly 100 216 people have gotten sick off their ‘cue; gotta say, with a placed named Tarheel I’m not too surprised

– Franklin Barbecue makes The National Eater 38 for 2015

– Barbecue Rankings read Franklin’s book, and here are the seven best things about it according to him

– Barbecuing on the Fourth of July is an American tradition

– Midwood Smokehouse and 10 Park Lanes makes Fervent Foodie’s list of Best Charlotte Restaurants

– The best barbecue side dishes, according to Southern Living

– Thrillist: 12 of the most important women in barbecue

– This listicle of 10 delicious joints in NC includes a couple of barbecue joints – B’s Barbecue and Lexington #1

– Speedy: look away…now

– Spending the day at the North Carolina State Barbecue Championship in Tryon from early June

–  A rundown of the barbecue styles you can find in NYC

– Frank Kaminsky: Public Enemy #1