BBQ&A: Bob Garner, North Carolina Barbecue Legend

For many Tar Heels Bob Garner‘s name and face are synonomous with North Carolina barbecue.  Garner is a beloved public television personality, restaurant reviewer, writer and barbecue guide book author, and all-around ambassador for our state’s food culture.  Whether writing or cozying up to a TV camera, Garner’s kind and authentic southern gentleman’s personality shines through.  His ability to [...]

Greatest Hits: BBQ&A with Jim Early, NC Barbecue Society Founder

[Note: This is a re-post of an interview originally posted in April 2010. Follow this link--Early BBQ&A--for an easier to read .pdf version of the interview.] Jim Early is a good old fashioned barbecue renaissance man.  A native of Henderson, NC, Early graduated from Wake Forest University law school and practiced as an attorney for many years.  His bio notes that, “In addition to being [...]

BBQ&A: Joe Kwon, Musician and (Food) Groupie

Joe Kwon is the high octane cellist (eat your heart out, Yo-Yo Ma) for the Avett Brothers, a North Carolina-based band that has steadily grown its reputation and commercial success over the past few years.  It is perhaps no coincidence that the Avetts reached new levels of success following Kwon joining the band in 2007 [...]

BBQ&A: Sam Suchoff, The Pig Chef-Owner

Sam Suchoff is not your typical pit boss.  But then The Pig is not your typical barbecue joint. Indeed, Suchoff has a damn near disturbing range of culinary experience for a barbecue cook.  More to the point, much of the fare he serves at The Pig veers away from North Carolina barbecue tradition with menu [...]

Notable Quotable: Jim Auchmutey

“Of all the signature foods of the South, none unites and divides the region like barbecue. When it comes to barbecue, southerners cannot agree on meat, sauce, technique, side dishes, or even how to spell the word. What they can agree on is that barbecue in all its variety is one of the fond traditions [...]

BBQ&A: Rick & Ryan of The North Carolina Barbecue Company

Rick Scott and Ryan Pitz teamed up to form The North Carolina Barbecue Company, a mail order business established “to deliver to doorsteps across the country the unique culinary culture of our great state.”  The North Carolina Barbecue Company is unique in offering both Eastern and Piedmont/Lexington-style ‘cue and slaw for delivery.  Recently I sat [...]

BBQ&A: Thomas Morris (aka Another_Q_Lover), BBQ Eater, Judge, Reviewer & Cooker

I met Thomas Morris, aka Another_Q_Lover, at the Twin City RibFest in Winston-Salem this past summer.  As we waited to judge the rib cooking competition, Morris agreed to sit down (well, he was sitting down already so that part didn’t take much convincing) and answer some of my disjointed questions.  We talked about his decades [...]

BBQ&A: James Villas, Writer and Cookbook Author

A self-described “Southerner by birth and temperament and appetite,” James Villas has given the people of his native North Carolina many reasons to be proud over the years.  His latest cookbook, Pig: King of the Southern Table, is perhaps the most significant reason yet.   Tarheels and tarheels at heart will be wowed by Pig’s wide-ranging collection of [...]

Purvis Previews Q

Charlotte Observer food editor Kathleen Purvis has a nice series of posts up chronicling her recent visits to some Lexington-style barbecue joints.  Check out the most recent post about Cook’s BBQ by following this link and then see the other posts (on Port-A-Pit and Keaton’s) from there.

BBQ&A: Anoop Desai, Barbecue Hero and American Idol

University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill alumnus Anoop Desai is perhaps best known as the author of an undergraduate honors thesis in American Studies entitled Why Barbecue Matters in the South.  The 60-page paper takes a scholarly look at southern culture through the grease-streaked lens of barbecue.  “If one examines the Durkheimian paradigm in [...]

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