Thanks for the heads up. My transplanted yankee self is always looking for a good BBQ joint. I haven't been happy with anything west of Wilson (or east of Lexington) yet.

You asked for it by posting this...

Open thread: eastern or piedmont? Have at it.

I like 'em both, but really prefer the Piedmont sauce.

No offense intended, but to me that's just a waste of good pig. Tell me, do you guys put vinegar on it to kill the taste of the hickory wood? Too bad you got no mesquite trees up there.

Mesquite imparts a notably (but uniquely southwestern and 'B-B-Quuuee') pleasant flavor, true, but vinegar (in very small amounts; I personally prefer piedmont) will enhance either the red oak (white oak is a waste) or hickory flavor that truly makes barbecue as noone outside NC can really understand. Sorry.

At least something good is coming from all those North Carolina hog lagoons.

I loves me some barbecue, but factory farming is just nasty.

Those hogs end up in grocery stores as bacon strips and hot dogs. Good barbecue will not be made from a factory farmed animal; it will be made from a pig who had a name.

there was this great joint in lynchburg we used to drive to. was called the silver pig.

one pig per day.

when the pig got eaten by around 3 or 4, they closed up shop until the next piggie arrived.

yes it was good.

in boston (sommerville really) they have this joint called redbones. the quality and quantity of the meat is great (bring copious tums tablets for after though), but it sure as heck isnt flavored like carolina style--its more texas.

which is odd because i thought the redbones were a tri-racial ethnic isolate out in coastal SC... but anyway.

Froz, that's good to hear. Really, I'm being serious.

It pained me to think that such a heartfelt, old-fashioned operation was linked to Smithfield's faceless mass-production monstrosity.

Just north of Nashville there is a barbeque joint called Centerpoint BBQ which was started by a couple from NC back in the 70s (?) - they do the chop, vinegar-style que but they serve it on a corn pone cake. A little weird but I guess that is the TN style. I'll have to check for wood cooking (there is a small outbuilding on the premises which leads me to think there is some wood cooking involved). My dad claims that the best que in the Raleigh area is out in Knightdale - I liked Ole Time BBQ on Hillsborough myself.

I understand how we are influenced by our environment. If you've only eaten one kind of BBQ all your life, then you will narurally favor that style. The PROPER use of mesquite in the indirect BBQ cooking method, IMHO, produces the best tasting pig, or chicken for that matter, because mesquite does not hide the taste of the meat. It lends a smoky flavor, but yet doesn't overpower the meat. I've had BBQ cooked on oak, hickory, pecan, apple, etc. The meat tasted like the wood it was cooked on. Mesquite blends its flavor with your spice rub, marinade, whatever you put on it, but the taste of the meat itself is still foremost.

When I was in boy scouts, we went to a 'camporee' at a dairy farm where there was no wood for cooking fires. The scoutmaster had the idea of bringing our own wood so we hauled along a load of discarded christmas trees. Let me tell you this did not make for good barbeque. It was like marinating in turpentine.