Cleveland

Linkdown: 2/23/22

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This morning, Axios Charlotte brings details on the upcoming Carolina Barbecue Festival to be held May 22 at Camp North End in Charlotte. I’ve heard rumors of a Charlotte barbecue festival starting last summer from Donald himself and more recently from Garren Kirkman of Jon G’s. But this festival is shaping up to be quite the event, with a roster of notable pit bosses from Barbecue Bros favorites from all over the Carolinas including Bryan Furman of B’s Cracklin’ Barbeque (who grew up in Charlotte), Elliot Moss of Asheville’s Buxton Hall Barbecue, Nathan Monk of Lexington Barbecue, Matthew Register of Southern Smoke in Garland, Tay Nelson of Bobby’s BBQ in Fountain Inn, SC, and Brandon Shepard of Shepard’s Barbecue in Emerald Isle. Master Blend Family Farm, a family-owned farm in Kenansville, N.C., will contribute the hogs for the event.

The day looks to be full of Carolina barbecue (be it east, west, or South), beer, local music, and charity, with the proceeds going to nonprofits Piedmont Culinary Guild, World Central Kitchen and Operation Barbecue Relief. And I’m here for it.

More details and tickets at carolinabbqfest.org

Native News

John Tanner’s been making the rounds in NC lately with fruitful stops at Troutman’s Barbecue in Denton

…as well as Dickie-Do’s BBQ in Haw River where he discovered some delicious, smoky barbecue

Jon G’s will be back in Waxhaw today

Charlotte Magazine has a pretty straightforward list of Where to Get Barbecue in Charlotte for 2022

Non-Native News

Now’s your chance to get your barbecue story featured on the Southern Foodways Alliance’s Gravy Podcast

Cattleack Barbeque, Hurtado Barbecue, and Heim Barbecue make Eater Dallas’ Essential Restaurants for the city

Latest Blake’s BBQ building update

At Brett’s BBQ Shop, J.C. Reid dug the sausages

Very curious to see who Tesla gets to smoke the barbecue at what could be the “Largest Barbecue in Texas” at their Austin Gigafactory

More coverage on the passing of Rene “Ray” Rodriguez

Chef Michael Symon’s Mabel’s BBQ is expanding

AMEN

Barbecue Bros Book Club: “Michael Symon’s Playing With Fire” by Michael Symon

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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: Michael Symon’s Playing with Fire: BBQ and More from the Grill, Smoker, and Fireplace: A Cookbook is part of a recent trend of cookbooks from barbecue personalities. See: Rodney Scott (2021), Aaron Franklin (2015), Matthew Register (2019), Christopher Prieto (2019), Ed Randolph (2019), Sam Jones (2019), and Elliott Moss (2016). Not that I mind, as it has clearly given me lots of content over the years.

As for Michael Symon’s contribution to the barbecue cookbook world (which came out in 2018), he starts off with a short “love letter to live-fire cooking” and that sets the tone for the rest of the book. Not strictly a barbecue book, Symon includes a lot of grilling recipes informed by his love of Cleveland.

Symon makes his case for “Cleveland-style barbecue,” which is “a style and menu that draw upon Cleveland’s rich cultural heritage, much of which is firmly rooted in eastern Europe.” He goes on “We season meats with Jewish deli-style pastrami spices, our kielbasa is made by a sixty-year-old Ukrainian butcher at the West Side Market, we smoke over locally sourced apple- and cherrywoods; we serve Hungarian-based sides like spaetzle and cabbage; our tangy mustard-based sauce is designed around the legendary local stadium-style mustard Bertman Ball Park.”

Outside of the typical barbecue recipes, that is what sets this book apart. I was disappointed that we only really get Symon’s perspective in the introductory letter and some of the short intros to the recipes. Contrasted with Rodney Scott’s recent book that bared so much of his barbecue soul and history, it seems like a missed opportunity.

All in all, Michael Symon’s “Playing with Fire” features nice food photography and a slightly different point of view, but is far from an essential barbecue book. I’d recommend checking out the books from Sam Jones, Elliott Moss, Rodney Scott, or Aaron Franklin first and then preview this book at your library to see if Cleveland-style barbecue and live-fire cooking with ingredients native to that region is of interest to you.

Linkdown: 7/5/17

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– The Battleground Ave location of Stamey’s will reopen in the next few weeks after a fire last summer and has even added a drive-thru

– A visit to Keaton’s Barbecue in Cleveland, NC near Statesville, known for their spicy chicken

– Keaton’s also gets a write up in this month’s Our State

– The Fayetteville Observer reviews Buddy’s Bar-B-Q, an eastern NC joint which opened 72 years ago in 1945

– Eater jumps on the “Charleston as a barbecue hotspot bandwagon”

– Stick with me here: Tim Carman of The Washington Post says that the brisket at Hill Country, which just recently switched off the gas assist on their Ole Hickory smoker, is “as good or better than Franklin’s”

– Austin 360’s Matthew Odam then takes exception to that statement

Look, I’ve never been to Hill Country barbecue in D.C., or the flagship in Manhattan opened by a man with Texas roots who modeled his restaurant on Kreuz Market in his family’s hometown of Lockhart. But I don’t need to to know that the brisket there, or anywhere in D.C., can’t touch that at Franklin Barbecue.

– The Washington Post then responds back immediately, calling Odam’s take “food chauvinism”

– Scott Moore, the pitmaster at Tejas Chocolate, writes about the experience After Texas Monthly, or ATM, when they were named a top 10 joint

– The Christian Science Monitor takes a macro view of barbecue today, starting from its roots up through this year’s Memphis in May competition

Barbecuing, of course, has always been bound up in the politics and race of the nation. Six years before colonists dumped tea in Boston Harbor to protest British tariffs, the royalist governor of North Carolina, William Tryon, tried to appease local militiamen by roasting a whole ox. The men responded by tossing the roast in the river, an act of affirmed loyalties hence referred to as the Wilmington Barbecue.

– Barbecue the film is available next week

Linkdown: 6/15/16

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– Is Athens, GA one of the great barbecue capitals in the US? Grant sure thinks so

– Daniel Vaughn heads back to Ohio in search of “Cleveland-style” barbecue

– Speaking of which, Robert Moss recently traveled down to Miami (tough job) in search of South Florida-style barbecue

– Congrats to Stamey’s Barbecue in Greensboro for winning 10Best’s Best BBQ Pork Sandwich in NC contest (B’s Barbecue in Greenville took the runner up spot); also thanks to 10Best for allowing us to masquerade as experts for a few weeks

– Destination BBQ’s latest roadtrip covers the first 100 exits of I-26

– Charlotte Business Journal has an interview with Amanda and Paul from EDIA Maps, who you may remember created maps for NC barbecue as well as beer

– Relevant for the newly relocated Speedy: 18 Must-Try OTP Barbecue Spots in Atlanta

– Get to know your regional styles of barbecue, according to JC Reid of the Houston Chronicle, though I might nitpick that Lexington-style barbecue is what NC is best known for; my experience has been most folks know about eastern-style whole hog more

– CAUTION, HOT TAKES ABOUND: Although, according to this, anything from a cow shouldn’t be called “barbecue”

– Where to find barbecue in 21 Eater cities

– Ed Mitchell’s upcoming barbecue restaurant (winter 2016) and food truck (!) has a new website