- Included in the Posts About Food List.
- One of our local barbecue restaurants, The Shed had their website hacked over the weekend, with the ISIS flag put up on the site. Weird.
Martin Winfree
March 9, 2015
I doubt this made the news anywhere else, but one of our local barbecue restaurants, The Shed (they won a nationwide barbecue competition of Live with Regis and Kelly) had their website hacked over the weekend, with the ISIS flag put up on the site. They haven’t figured out what happened yet. Weird.
Rachel Wagoner
Wow
Michael Stafford
How does their barbecue compared to back home, Martin?
Dara R Rodell
Unbelievable! That must be a treat to eat there, though!
Martin Winfree
Mostly barbecue down here is ribs; my kind of barbecue is called “pulled pork”. It is okay to good around here, but not like back home. What I tell people is that the Shed barbecue is too “foodie” for my tastes: very chunky and too many complex flavors. Vinegar and cayenne: that’s all you need if the pork is cooked right. There is one place in Orange Beach, AL that was absolute killer (everyone with me agreed also); for the locals, it is a freestanding restaurant along the main highway near the Publix. That is a long way from here though. 🙁
Martin Winfree
Dara, it is good, and I eat there when I am nearby; but I don’t go out of my way to get there. Mostly I am focused on seafood down here anyway. 🙂
Alan Baragona
Well, the name of ISIS’s leader, Abu Bakr, is close to “Abu Bbq,” so maybe they got confused.
Michael Stafford
Martin, and the rest of my transplanted N.C, friends, there is a wonderful book published by UNC Press entitled Holy Smoke. It is a history of N.C. barbecue and it a delightful collection of stories, interviews, recipes and recommendations about where to get the best barbecue in N.C. Over the last few years I have spent some time trying to go to all of the “best” barbecue restaurants. That has been a pleasurable experience. Most of us grew up exposed to Lexington style barbecue and it is still a favorite. But down east it is slightly different in that the sauce does not contain any ketchup usually. You guys need to come visit and let Big Mike take you to a couple of my favorite places. Ya’ll come, ya hear!
Martin Winfree
When I first moved back to NC (Greensboro) in 1996, UNC public TV had just come out with their program on NC BBQ restaurants. I literally could not keep my mouth from watering every time it came on for months. While I was living in New York, there was a very good NC barbecue restaurant on Varick Street that we went to a lot. Their hot sauce wasn’t that great (can’t touch Texas Pete), but the barbecue was just like home. They had photos of several Carolina BBQ joints posted also, and that just made it better.
Michael Stafford
Yeah, Bob Garner the host of the show to which you are referring has made a good living going around the state and eating at the seemingly endless supply of barbecue restaurants. I recently heard that there 20 restaurants serving barbecue in Lexington alone. There are at least 24 barbecue places in Winston-Salem including Little Richard’s, Hill’s and Mr. Barbecue which have been in business since we were kids. All three have been around for more than 60 years. Now that is saying something when you consider the failure rate of restaurants. I bet you ate at least one of them growing up and if I had to guess it was Little Richard’s over on Country Club. Stamey’s in Greensboro is one of the most famous barbecue restaurants in N.C. and is also one of the oldest. Of course the most famous in our area were the original western N.C. style barbecue places in Lexington, Lexington Barbecue and Speedy’s Barbecue. Bob Melton’s barbecue, where I live, was the first sit down barbecue restaurant in N.C. founded in 1924, It was destroyed by Hurricane Floyd and never rebuilt. One of the most unusual barbecue joints is in Ayden, N.C. There is located the Skylight Inn which took its name from the lights on the little airfield nearby. Skylight has a replica of the dome of the U.S. Capitol building located on its roof which I have never understood and still serves its food in paper boats. Considered to be one of the best and most original (still smokes with all wood/no gas).
Martin Winfree
Stamey’s (or one of them anyway) is on Battleground Avenue and was directly on my route from home to the office, so we ate there all the time for the year or so that I lived in Greensboro in 1996-1997. The cobblers were outstanding as well as the barbecue. (There was also a Winfree Real Estate office and a Winfree Road along that same route, which amazed me no end). I got by another good one in Madison-Mayodan (I forget the name); their barbecue was also available in the supermarkets and advertised itself as being lowfat. I think Hill’s is the one where we ate mostly as kids, though I know that I have been to Mr. Barbecue also – not sure about Little Richard’s. After seeing Bob Garner’s show, I started making the rounds in Lexington – for some reason, previously I thought that Lexington style had to do with Lexington, VA. I think it was the Lexington Barbecue Restaurant right along one of the highways there that particularly blew me away. While I was living in Raleigh, I was strictly focused on the Eastern style; whenever any of us in the appraisal firm had a job further east (Rocky Mount, Wilson – all the great meccas), we always had a discussion about which barbecue restaurant to hit next. My boss in that firm used to tell me about the one in Mebane that was so good that trains used to stop right in the middle of town so that the engineers could get lunch there. Their style is a little different from what you see most places in the state (thicker sauce, etc.), but it is every bit as good. But whenever I was in the western part of the state, I would get directed to great BBQ also. I got spoiled living in NC where almost every BBQ restaurant was at least good if not fantastic – not so where I have lived elsewhere.