Monk: The local Fox affiliate for the Barbecue Bros’ hometown of High Point (where Rudy both interned and worked for a brief time) recently took a trip to the town of Welcome in neighboring Davidson County to visit the underrated Rick’s Smokehouse. Owner Rick Matthews gave Chad Tucker a behind the scenes look as he prepped barbecue chicken.
On my visit to Rick’s Smokehouse back in February 2020, I found them to be admirably carrying on the Lexington barbecue tradition despite being a relatively newer restaurant that opened in 2009. This piece covers the pit fire that burned the restaurant down in 2010 but they thankfully rebuilt and are seemingly thriving. I hope to make it back someday soon.
Monk: In this short feature from UNC TV’s NC Weekend, host Deborah Holt Noel traverses across the city, taking in all the tastes and experiences it has to offer. From wakeboarding to donuts to breweries and wineries.
But of course, there’s also barbecue. On that front, she visits the barbecue pit that was discovered during the renovation of City Hall in 2014 (1:01) which also contains all of the posters of The Barbecue Festival (2:00) which brings in 150,000 visitors each October and will continue next year.
No trip to Lexington is complete without actually eating barbecue, and she wraps up the barbecue content in this video by visiting the two most prominent restaurants in Lexington Barbecue (3:19 and Bar-B-Q Center (4:45), which started as an ice cream parlor.
Description: There’s so much to do in Lexington that you can spend an entire weekend there and that’s just what we did with visits to breweries, wineries, restaurants, donut shops, even a wake park! Lexington, NC https://visitlexingtonnc.com/
Monk: The NC Food & Beverage Podcast speak with with Keith “Bub” Wright of Lexington Barbecue, who married into Monk family by way of Wayne Monk’s daughter Kelly, who he began dating in high school while working at Lexington Barbecue. Bub speaks with the NC F&B guys and schools them on Lexington-style barbecue and how they do things in Davidson County. Right off the bat, he explains why they serve their barbecue three ways: chopped, coarse chopped, and sliced.
Description: The gents go on the road to one of the “Mecca’s” of BBQ, Lexington, NC. Their first stop was at Lexington BBQ AKA Monks. Here’s what they learned:
What makes Lexington BBQ different than Eastern NC and Texas.
Why pork shoulder became the meat of choice
Who are the major players in the Lexington BBQ game.
When to take your meat off the smoker.
How many pounds of pork get cooked per day? When you learn this in relation to the amount of people there are in the city of Lexington you will be shocked!
Monk: It’s been over a year since I last got takeout from Noble Smoke and much longer since I had last dined in. Recently, I found myself in the neighborhood just down the street getting my second COVID vaccine shot, so beforehand I decided to treat myself to lunch on their patio on a nice Spring day.
As everything is a la carte at Noble Smoke, I ordered a Lexington-style chopped pork sandwich ($8), a 1/4 lb of smoked turkey ($5), and a side of Anson Mills hush puppies ($4).
Speedy is on record as proclaiming Noble Smoke’s sandwich the best pork sandwich outside of Lexington. And he’s not wrong. As has been well documented, the pork shoulders are smoked in a brick pit that was fabricated to mimic the pits of Lexington Barbecue (owner Jim Noble got permission from his friends the Monk family). Topped with a red slaw on a fresh baked bun, it’s quite a satisfying sandwich. I’d be tempted to go with getting just two of those next time instead.
Speedy and I have both been into trying smoked turkey at more places so I went with that as a side. Noble Smoked has a very good version of smoked turkey, smokey and not overly dry. The sandwich might be a good switch up order sometime in the future.
Noble Smoke’s hush puppies are made with cornmeal from Anson Mills in Columbia, South Carolina. I find them to be the best hush puppies in Charlotte, no doubt.
Noble Smoke has a daily rotation of fruit hand pies ($4), and on this day they had blueberry, which was fantastic.
Noble Smoke continues to knock it out of the park. On a nice day, their patio is a great setting, with their pallets of wood from Carolina Cookwood providing some separation to the parking lot in addition to setting some nice ambiance and the recent introduction of a beer shack for outdoor drink service. I hope to spend more Spring and Summer afternoons on that patio.
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