october-2010

FOOD FIGHT
TRAVEL REPORT: NORTH CAROLINA
All across the Midwest and the South, meat lovers
have long argued about the merits and pitfalls of
different styles of barbecue, from Kansas City’s
sweet sauces to Tennessee’s whiskey flavorings.
But nowhere is the debate more heated than in
North Carolina, where two competing schools of barbecue—
eastern and Lexington style (from the Piedmont region)—vie
for supremacy. For decades, two writers have gone toe-totoe
about which style should be the state’s official barbecue.
In the Lexington corner, there’s Jerry Bledsoe, a Greensboro
News & Record and Charlotte Observer reporter-turnedcrime-book
author, and on the Eastern side, there’s Dennis
Rogers, a retired columnist from the The News & Observer in
Raleigh. Gentlemen, your arguments please.
OPENING STATEMENTS
BLEDSOE: IN GEOGRAPHIC
terms, the state’s styles of barbecue
should be labeled “Eastern”
and “Piedmont.” The origins of
Piedmont style can be narrowed
to a single town, Lexington, the
barbecue center of the earth. Thus,
it usually is called Lexington style.
It can be found in places roughly
paralleling the portion of I-85
from Concord to Burlington.
The pig, of course, is the focus
of both schools. The primary
reason why North Carolina
barbecue is pork is because it
embraces wood smoke as no other
meat does. It is cooked whole in
the East, but only shoulders are
used in the Piedmont.
This brings us to the
essential difference between the
two schools, and explains why
Lexington style is so superior.
The very definition of barbecue
is meat slowly cooked over wood
coals, preferably hickory in the
case of pork. Lexington style clings
to this tradition, which requires
skill, much attention and lots of
hard work. That tradition has been
largely abandoned in the East,
where whole pigs are placed in
automatic gas cookers.
ROGERS: THE SECRET OF
why eastern North Carolina’s
legendary pork barbecue is
superior to that of the Piedmont
region is really no secret at all:
Cook a whole hog low and slow
and baste it with a simple sauce
made from vinegar, sugar, salt and
pepper. Of course, that’s like saying
all it takes to be a great golfer is
to drive, chip and putt like Tiger
Woods. Easier said than done.
Swine fanciers from less
barbecue-enlightened regions of
this great land may be wondering
about the lack of tomatoes in
the sauce I described. After all,
don’t tomato-laden sauces reign
in The Great American Barbecue
Crescent that stretches through
Memphis, Kansas City and on
down to Lockhart, TX?
Yep, they sure do. But not in
eastern North Carolina. Here, our
pit masters know great barbecue
is about the meat, not the sauce.
Lexington-style barbecue fans
go on and on about the tomato-y
sauces served in their barbecue
joints. Down east, where civilization
and barbecue began, the
sauce is an afterthought. Nice, but
not vital.
OCTOBER 2010 GO MAGAZINE
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