Flat Rock

Linkdown: 11/26/14

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– The Pit beats out NC State University in The Triangle Business Journal’s Battle of the Brands for Reader’s Choice

– Downtown Charleston is getting yet another barbecue joint, this time with Irish pub Egan & Sons coming back as a barbecue restaurant (under a new name) complete with a new smokehouse to be built out back

– I missed this back in the summer, but Home Team BBQ (currently with Sullivan’s Island and West Ashley locations) is also expanding to downtown Charleston

– Billy Durney, pitmaster of Hometown Barbecue in New York, to consult on a Los Angeles barbecue restaurant for Mendocino Farms

– Boone’s Bar-B-Que sauces are now available at Savory Spice Shop in Charlotte

– Ohio-based barbecue chain City Barbeque plans to open another triangle location; in addition to their Cary location they are opening a location at Southpoint Mall in Durham

– Jim ‘N Nicks and Dinosaur Bar-B-Que are forming a partnership for the purest of barbecue ideals – “to leverage their buying power, consolidate labor costs and grow both companies”

– A flattering review of the Flat Rock Wood Room, just outside of Asheville

As for what comes out of that 250-degree wood-fired pit, well, I can only gush. Ordering a half rack of their St. Louis style ribs, I carefully narrowed my sides down to wood-smoked mac and cheese and collard greens. While the mac and cheese was plenty cheesy, it proved to be fairly standard with minimal wood smoke. The collards, on the other hand, had plenty of flavor and a slight sweetness.

– Barbecue Rankings recounts his “barbecue odyssey” in Feast Magazine

I began my barbecue odyssey on October 22, 2013, at Pappy’s Smokehouse in St. Louis.  I was nervous as I met owner Mike Emerson and tried to act as if I knew something about barbecue.  I have always considered myself a casual barbecue fan, but the truth is that I knew very little about regional nuances, barbecue history, smoking practices and the way restaurants work before setting out on this project.  I didn’t prepare much before setting off on my journey – I wanted to learn from the people working the pits day in and day out, not the so-called experts.

– Christmas is right around the corner

Linkdown: 5/7/14

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– It’s spelled “barbecue”

– The “BeerBQ” hotdog from Triple C made with pulled pork and a sauce made with their smoked amber beer was JJ’s Red Hots best selling hot dog in its “brewdogs” series

– No NC festival made this list of barbecue festivals from USA Today (h/t bbqboard)

– This list of five meals you can’t miss in NC includes Luella’s Bar-B-Que in Asheville; more coverage from the Asheville Citizen-Times

At Luella’s, you can get an order of ribs (excellent), beef brisket (also excellent), chopped pork (some of the best I’ve had, and I’m a certified barbecue judge), and tempeh. The tempeh, a locally made soy-based product, is the veggie surprise. The menu says it’s “almost blasphemous, but so good we’ll forgive you.” And whether you’re a vegetarian or not, it’s worth a taste. Served glazed with a sweet-hot sauce and impregnated with hickory smoke, you’ll hardly notice you’re not eating meat. The chef/owner told me that two of his frequent customers are both vegetarians, and they rave about this dish.

– More lists: 12 Bones in Asheville and Hubba Hubba Smokehouse in Flat Rock (30 miles southeast of Asheville) make this list of America’s 35 best ribs

– The Jiggy with the Piggy BBQ Challenge at the Research Center in Kannapolis is this weekend

– The 10th edition of the Texas Pete Twin City RibFest will take place June 5-8 in Winston-Salem and according to the producer of the festival Allen McDavid it distinguishes from other “cook-offs” by the following:

Barbecue festivals like the Texas Pete Twin City RibFest have the requisite competition but that takes a back seat to satisfying the appetites of thousands of festival attendees who appreciate the choice of barbecue from several nationally renowned pitmasters with the necessary equipment necessary to feed thousands of hungry attendees. According to McDavid, “Our BBQ teams generally go through a tractor trailer load of meat every RibFest. If we don’t have rain, it’s more.”

– The Dallas Observer was not thrilled with Texas Ranger pitcher Matt Harrison (originally from Durham) and his preference for NC barbecue

It’s worse because this means that the Texas Rangers let someone from North Carolina answer a barbecue question on their account. Without censoring it. And let me remind you, the tweet is still there. Nobody immediately deleted it. No interns were fired over this.