– 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