Ed Mitchell

Linkdown: 5/16/18

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– Here’s whats going on at this weekend’s Memphis in May Barbecue Competition; I’ll see you out there

– Been a big couple of weeks for Rodney Scott:

– The Charlotte Observer’s Kathleen Purvis puts his James Beard win in perspective in this essay

– Justin Brunson of Old Major in Denver has a BQ Grill that he uses for catering as well as for fun

When I arrived at Old Major, Brunson was already stoking the fire in his BQ Grill, a steel behemoth sporting two huge drawers for coals, four air vents, enough horizontal space to cook a 250-pound pig, and a wood storage rack in the back. “It’s pretty much just a big, metal oven,” says Brunson. “This is the same grill that Sam Jones [of Sam Jones BBQ in Winterville, North Carolina] and Elliott Moss [of Buxton Hall BBQ in Asheville, North Carolina] use for barbecue. They make a gas model, but that’s not real barbecue. It’s got to be all wood, all the time.”

…

“This is my hobby right now, cooking on this grill,” says Brunson. “With Red Bear about to open, it’s my stress relief.” It’s also about supporting local farmers and producers, and experimenting with the “flavor of Colorado.” Brunson’s goal: To use the grill for catering, special events, and to cook local pigs, lambs, and more for anyone who asks. (Seriously, if you call Old Major and ask for a whole-animal feast, Brunson will cook it for you.)

– Here’s the full menu for next month’s Big Apple Barbecue Block Party including ribs from the newly awarded James Beard winner Rodney Scott and whole hog from Ed and Ryan Mitchell as well as Sam Jones

– For such a good docuseries, David Chang’s “Ugly Delicious” gets barbecue wrong

– Midwood Smokehouse’s Park Rd location is having a barbecue bootcamp on June 23

– Big news for Knightdale, NC

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Linkdown: 4/11/18

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– The brisket bandits in St. Louis have been caught

– Texas Pete, a NC barbecue staple, gets a mention in this Eat Sip Trip article on the origins of hot sauce

Garner Foods of North Carolina was seeking to augment their barbecue sauce line and introduced a red pepper Louisiana-style hot sauce in 1929, which they named Texas Pete, to capitalize on the popularity of cowboy movies at the time. The product is a Carolina staple. According to food author Robert Moss, at the legendary Skylight Inn Barbecue in Ayden, NC, “They douse the pork with vinegar and Texas Pete while it’s still being chopped.”

– The Hub City Hog Fest took place in Spartanburg last weekend, where more than 40 teams from the Carolinas and Georgia participated in the two-day competition

– I checked this place out on a layover to Austin from Charlotte and I will have similarly good things to say when the review posts in a few weeks

– Luella’s Bar-B-Que in Asheville gets featured on Cooking Channel’s “Cheap Eats” episode on Asheville which first airs tonight at 11pm

– WNCT in eastern NC profiles Morris Barbecue, which has only opened on Saturdays in Greene County since the 1950’s, in their latest People and Places segment

– Sam Jones, Ed and Ryan Mitchell, and Rodney Scott (among others) will be back at this year’s Big Apple Barbecue Block Party

– Oof:

 

Linkdown: 1/17/18

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– As good as the man’s barbecue is, at some point you have to wonder if Ed Mitchell’s business sense doesn’t match up; his Raleigh restaurant and food truck are both currently on hold and don’t look to be moving forward anytime soon

– Due to the fire at the old Lexington Home Brands Plant No. 1 and the expected clean-up time, Uptown Lexington has decided to cancel the annual BBQ Capital Cook-off in April

– A new all wood barbecue joint named Meating Street BBQ has opened in Roswell, GA; it was opened by a SC native

– The team behind General Muir in Atlanta are opening a wood-fired barbecue joint called Wood’s Chapel in the Summerhill neighborhood that will smoke whole hog among other meats

– An eastern NC native is now smoking whole hogs in central Virginia as part of a Carolina Q Pig Pickers catering operation

– The Smoking Ho starts 2018 off with a review:

– Fuller’s Old Fashioned Bar-B-Que gets a mention on this post on where to eat in Fayetteville, NC

– In another travel guide (this time from the Chicago Tribune via The Washington Post), both Henry’s Smokehouse and Bucky’s BBQ are mentioned as “100-mile barbeque”

– When there’s a threat of 1-3″ in the forecast in NC:

 

Barbecue Bros Book Club: The One True Barbecue by Rien Fertel

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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.

IMG_8196A collection of profiles on whole hog pitmasters throughout the southeast, “The One True Barbecue” by Rien Fertel is an enjoyable if not somewhat controversial read. In particular, Fertel ruffled feathers with his chapters on Wilber Shirley and Ed Mitchell. He portrayed the former’s restaurant as a joint with a racial division of labor between the front of the house and the back and the latter as a marketing gimmick in overalls that cooks hogs in a non-traditional manner (hot and fast rather than the traditional low and slow). However fair Fertel’s representation may or may not be (and he is but one man with his opinion), the fact that he spoke with neither for the purposes of this book only added more embers to the burn barrel.

Fertel ties the profiles together through narrative, following his path from New Orleans to the Carolinas and back, with even a stop in Bushwick to visit Arrogant Swine. Each chapter not only explores the pitmaster(s) themselves but in some cases the history of an entire town with Ayden, NC and its two joints Skylight Inn and Bum’s. He particularly favors Scott’s-Parker’s Barbecue in Lexington, TN, visiting with pitmaster Ricky Parker in the first chapter and then his sons after his death in the last chapter. In between, Fertel visits 12 other whole hog joints in Tennessee, North Carolina, South Carolina, Mississippi, and the aforementioned Arrogant Swine in NY.

I enjoyed Fertel’s writing and found this to be a quick read that I devoured over just a few sittings. Fertel cut his teeth writing oral histories for The Southern Foodways Alliance, and his experience writing on southern food showed. A small complaint would be that the only color photographs are confined to a section at the center of the book – I would have loved to see them throughout as opposed to the smaller black and white ones within the chapters. In any case, I can’t recommend “The One True Barbecue” enough.

–Monk

Friday Find: Rien Fertel on his “feud” with Ed Mitchell

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I recently finished the excellent “The One True Barbecue” by Rien Fertel, where he travels the Carolinas and Tennessee and profiles the men, families, and towns behind whole hog barbecue. Part of the chapter “Will Success Spoil Rodney Scott?” covers Ed Mitchell and his previous two restaurants in Wilson and in Durham, though not in a very flattering light. Some of the controversy comes from the fact that Fertel didn’t actually interview Mitchell for the book and instead relied on his 2012 interview of the man plus additional research. Per the News & Observer:

He presents a rocky picture, and Mitchell comes across as an image-crafting marketing pro and a barbecue rogue who cooks his hogs hot and fast. Fertel compares the way Mitchell presents himself, with his bushy white beard and well-worn overalls, as the sort of hyper-Southern gimmick one would find in a Cracker Barrel dining room.

Here’s some footage taken by the excellent Gene Galin (who also does some great work for the Chatham Journal photographing NC State, UNC Chapel Hill, and Duke football) at a book reading at Flyleaf Book Store in Chapel Hill last year where he defends his portrayal of Mitchell and hopes he can speak with him at the then-upcoming Big Apple Barbecue last summer. No word if anything ever came of it.

Linkdown: 11/9/16

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– Ed Mitchell is no longer opening a stall at the upcoming Morgan Street Food Hall & Market in Raleigh but the News Observer has more information on his food truck which can be booked for holiday events

– A list of Charlotte barbecue joints from Charlotte’s Got A Lot; I think ours is  a little more comprehensive

– Grant visits Smokin’ J’s BBQ, another no-frills joint in Knoxville

– The When Pigs Fly BBQ Festival is this weekend in Fayetteville and features a whole hog competition

– Summerville, SC is getting a new whole hog barbecue joint in the second location of Swig & Swine

– Elliott Moss is going on a book tour for Buxton Hall Barbecue’s Book of Smoke: Wood-Smoked Meat, Sides and More, and is making a stop in Charleston

– Buxton Hall gets a nice write up in this month’s Our State Magazine

Linkdown: 10/12/16

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– Hurricane Matthew causes some supply chain issues for the whole hog barbecue at Buxton Hall Barbecue

– Once again, the train will stop in Lexington for The Barbecue Festival on October 22

– Grant’s latest barbecue stops: Dead End BBQ in Knoxville and The Hickory Pit in Chattanooga

– Thrillist on John Lewis: This Man Spent 10 Years Perfecting America’s Best Brisket

Lewis figured out the exact thickness and material to insulate the walls to keep the heat in too. And because the long, round tanks and smooth edges on Lewis’ smokers are the perfect shape to keep heat and smoke circling consistently through, there’s no need to get up and move product around. Smoke stacks are rolled to a specific diameter. When I asked Lewis what that diameter was, he demurred. These specs are top secret.

– Lewis Barbecue makes the list of Eater’s Heat Map for Charleston for October

– Next year’s Cuegrass will be April 5 in front of The Pit

– Speaking of downtown Raleigh, will they be getting more Ed Mitchell soon?

Linkdown: 6/22/16

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– In response to this infamous Eater post last week, Robert Moss reluctantly defends brisket as “barbecue”

Such manifestos are nothing new. Barbecue scribblers have been making inflammatory statements about one regional style or another for as long as we’ve had barbecue scribblers. These days, I imagine, they do wonders for web traffic, but do they do much for the larger cause of barbecue?

– Part 2 of the I-26 guide to SC barbecue

– As part of the deluge of content from Eater’s Barbecue Week, here’s a guide to regional barbecue sauces

– A coarse chopped tray from Lexington #1 and a large whole hog tray from Skylight Inn makes Eater’s 23 Essential Barbecue Dishes in America

– More from Eater: Grady’s Bar-B-Q in Dudley from contributor Robert Donovan

– Available for pre-order now

– The winners from the Blue Ridge Barbecue and Music Festival from earlier in June

– No new information here, but more confirmation about Ed Mitchell’s new barbecue venture in Raleigh’s Brier Creek neighborhood as well as his food truck

– As he moves from Atlanta to Chattanooga, Grant weighs in on the greatness of Georgia barbecue

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

 

Linkdown: 6/8/16

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– Destination BBQ has put together a list of barbecue joints along the I-95 corridor in South Carolina

– Where to find barbecue in Cabarrus County (just north of Charlotte), including Barbecue Bros fave The Smoke Pit (our review here)

– For a short time last week, there was a Facebook page for Ed Mitchell’s Que at Brier Creek but it has since been taken down

– Grant’s latest stops: Owen’s Bar-B-Que in Tallapoosa and Adams Bar-B-Q in Cartersville

– Eater’s Complete Guide to the 2016 NY Big Apple Barbecue Block Party

– The Smoking Ho visits FullHouse BBQ in Georgetown, TX

– The Blue Ridge BBQ and Music Festival is this weekend in Tryon

– Morris Barbeque in Hookerton is 85 years young