red bridges barbecue lodge

Linkdown: 6/9/21

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Southern Living Magazine, their barbecue editor Robert Moss, Home Team BBQ, and Swig & Swine recently announced the Holy Smokes barbecue festival in Charleston this November. The pitmasters are still to be announced, but expect folks from South Carolina, California, Georgia, New York, North Carolina and Texas are expected to be in attendance. Here’s hoping it becomes a fixture for years to come.

Native News

Congrats to Lyttle Bridges Cabiness of Red Bridges Barbecue Lodge in Shelby for her induction into the Barbecue Hall of Fame

Mac’s Hospitality Group, parent company of Mac’s Speed Shop, adds Rare Roots alum Jay Spungin as Director of Operations

Ayden, NC, home to Skylight Inn and Bum’s Restaurant, chooses barbecue over collards for its future marketing campaign

Lawrence Barbecue finally opened at Boxyard RTP this past Saturday

Help name the new Sweet Lew’s Barbeque food truck

Non-Native News

Franklin Barbecue is reopening on 9/1

Eater: “Why Barbecue Sauce is Essential to Black Barbecue”

Barbecue Bible on “Black Smoke”

Matt Horn is on a roll in Oakland

Linkdown: 12/9/20

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Last week, an article that former Charlotte Observer food writer Kathleen Purvis did for Charlotte Magazine appeared online. It digs into Chef Jim Noble and his complicated stature in Charlotte’s restaurant landscape. On one hand, he is a well-respected and successful chef and restaurateur whose philanthropic pursuits include his King’s Kitchen restaurant that employs people who are under normal circumstances considered unemployable due to poverty, homelessness, or addiction. He is also a reverend who leads bible study at that same restaurant. On the other hand, he has a religiously conservative view on gay rights and was one of only two restaurateurs who officially supported House Bill 2 (or HB2) passed by the NC Legislature in 2015 that required transgender people to use the bathroom that conformed with the gender on their birth certificates, essentially wiping out a nondiscrimination ordinance enacted shortly before by the Charlotte City Council.

From there, Purvis zooms out to explore some of the history of discrimination in the south in both the past and the present. I won’t recap it here, but it’s definitely worth a read.

It should be noted that while Noble declined to be interviewed for Purvis’s story there is no record of Noble’s restaurants discriminating against anyone in the LGBTQ+ community. But that doesn’t mean that potential patrons of his restaurants (which, in addition to Noble Smoke includes two Rooster’s Kitchen locations and Bossy Beulah’s) won’t take his views into account in deciding whether or not to spend money there, regardless of whether they are part of the LGBTQ+ community or not.

I haven’t made a decision either way, but it certainly has been and will continue to be on my mind going forward.

Native News

Check out this beautifully restored sign at Red Bridges Barbecue Lodge

A City Barbeque will soon be occupying a former Steak ‘n Shake in Greensboro

Get your Jon G’s preorder in by next week

BBQ King in Lincolnton is also taking preorders for Christmas

Non-Native News

John Tanner doing yeoman’s work by taste testing the McRib

Speaking of the McRib, here’s Francis Lam’s bite-by-bite review from 10 years ago

A combination oyster bar, barbecue joint, and microbrewery is in the works from an ambitious Columbia, SC developer

A roundup of Greenville (SC) barbecue joints with a very high level primer on barbecue in the state

ICYMI, our Nashville Top 5 Posted on Monday

HOG POT

Linkdown: 9/9/20

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Food & Wine Magazine released a huge barbecue blitz last week just in time for Labor Day

From writer Caroline Schnapp reflecting on her childhood in Durham at local institution Bullock’s Bar-B-Q to an unassuming barbecue joint in Alabama between a race track and a Bass Pro Shop

…to tips and recipes for the home smoker from the different types of sauces

…what spices to use to make a rub

…to which cuts of meat to smoke. Plus a whole lot more in the original link.

Native News

Raleigh Magazine has the latest on the still-about-to-be-booming Raleigh barbecue scene; the article notes that Ed Mitchell’s new venture The Preserve hopes to finish its kitchen soon for takeout and that Friendship Barbecue is not moving forward

Sam Jones BBQ’s Raleigh location is on track for a November opening

The Gaston Gazette profiles the Webb family of Red Brides Barbecue Lodge in addition to two other non-barbecue families in the area

Behind The Redneck BBQ Lab in Johnston County is a brother/sister duo with some serious competition barbecue pedigree

The last chance to claim your #SummerofCue t-shirt is today by 3pm

Non-Native News

Fresh off the release of Chef’s Table: BBQ, Rodney Scott’s got a book coming out next year titled “Rodney Scott’s World of BBQ: Every Day Is a Good Day” that is co-written with Lolis Eric Elie; you can pre-order it now (h/t Robert Moss’s The Cue Sheet)

Scott also shares his favorite places to eat in Charleston

The Charleston Post and Courier writes up the SC Midlands barbecue restaurants like Big T Bar-B-Q, True BBQ, and Hite’s BBQ, who were all featured in the Food & Wine 50 states article

RIP Mike Wilson of Saw’s BBQ, who recently passed away unexpectedly; he spent his adult life in the Birmingham area but grew up in Charlotte

Chicago restaurants are also pivoting to barbecue during the pandemic

Birria, a meat stew traditionally made from goat meat, but occasionally made from beef or mutton, is having a moment in San Antonio

I look forward to continuing to follow this story about John T. Edge and how the Southern Foodways Alliance will move forward

Linkdown: 4/1/20

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With the recent return to curbside service as a result of social distancing, Red Bridges Barbecue Lodge returns to its roots of carhops

Last week’s Smoke Sheet examined how barbecue joints are adapting to Covid-19

Horn Barbecue in Oakland is raising money to help feed the community during covid-19

Josh Bowen of John Brown Smokehouse is raising money for ER workers in NYC

Neil McClure of McCure’s Barbecue and the Deswine Intervention competition team smoked barbecue for Children’s Hospital workers last weekend in New Orleans

The Memphis in May World Championship Barbecue Cooking Contest has been rescheduled to Sept 30-Oct 3

There is no ‘I’ in barbecue

Johnson Family Barbecue in Durham had a recent incident with a Postmates driver and the owner Wayne Johnson has made things worse by responding to negative Yelp reviews with racist and inflammatory language

The death of barbecue hash was perhaps premature, writes Robert Moss for Southern Living

Pinkerton’s BBQ owner Grant Pinkerton is interviewed by The Andy Staple Show on The Athletic and discusses how his staff are dealing with Covid-19

Uncorked is a new Netflix movie set in a Memphis barbecue restaurant that serves…brisket?

WILBER’S BACK (soon)