Monk: Preparations are underway, not only from the organizers of the festival but also the restaurants on the fringe of town who hope to get additional traffic from the 150,000 or so folks coming into town for the weekend.
I did learn from this video that a barbecue joint named Cafe 71 has recently opened in the former Rick’s Smokehouse in Welcome, which is wonderful news and has been added to my list.
Monk: Fascinating story first brought to our attention by the excellent NC Rabbit Hole newsletter by Jeremy Markovich. And relevant because Texas Pete has a long history with NC barbecue: “[The history section on the Texas Pete website] goes on to say that basically, during the depression, the Garner family wanted some spicier sauce to serve at their barbecue stand. The sauce outlived the stand.”
Also fascinating: Jeremy first brought this to our attention (culling information from a publicly available lawsuit, but still) but has since been aggregated out of credit. He breaks it down in the following Twitter thread.
The story has since been picked up by The Huffington Post, USA Today, Business Insider/Food Insider, and the Nexstar-owned news stations like High Point’s Fox 8.
In any case, I urge you to support Jeremy and NC Rabbit Hole for not only this but lots of other fascinating, NC-focused stories.
The last bit on Texas Pete (for now), an Our State Magazine story on its history from 2017
Mac’s Speed Shop’s latest location in Concord will also feature live music
A short video on Cook Out from Food Insider
The Barbecue Festival is coming up on October 22
John Mueller’s barbecue joint at the Granary didn’t come to fruition before he passed, but his friend Jeff Ancira is keeping his memory alive with BBQ at the Granary
Heirloom Market is still found on Eater Atlanta’s 38 Essential Restaurants lis
The Houston Chronicle Top 100 List features several barbecue restaurants, including Brett’s BBQ Shop
Voting Ends later today in this poll from City Limits Barbeque
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/
The Barbecue Festival in Lexington announces its 2022 date: October 22, 2022. For the second year in a row, it was cancelled due to staff shortages and safety concerns due to the COVID-19 pandemic. In normal times, The Barbecue Festival is the region’s largest one-day street festival and draws near 100,000 people every year.
The Mallard Creek Barbecue, which usually takes place the Thursday before The Barbecue Festival, also cancelled for the second year in a row earlier this year. It 91st edition will hopefully take place the fourth Thursday of October in 2022.
Other festivals are able to take place, such as euphoria Greenville last weekend and the inaugural Holy Smokes Barbecue Festival in November. Just a reminder that while things are in some ways better than 2020, we may still be between 6-12 months away from true normalcy.
BBQ BOWL
Cary Magazine checks out Lawrence Barbecue
Lawrence Barbecue also gets some love from Eater Carolinas
Food truck Rumble CLT: K&N BBQ vs Dan Good Que
Lawrence Ellis, son of legendary Bill Ellis and owner of longtime Wilson restaurant Marty’s BBQ, passed away last week
JL’s Southwest Brisket Burgers, the newish trailer at Lewis Barbecue in Charleston that replaced Juan Luis, gets a pop-in from Southeastern Dispatch
Palmira Barbecue will be opening in the Port of Call food and brew hall in the old Bubba Gump space in downtown Charleston
Heirloom Market is featured in “Unique Eats and Eateries of Atlanta” by Amanda Plumb
Last week, The Smoke Sheet recapped the American Royal World Series of Barbecue