Where to Find the Oldest Old-School Barbecue?

Looking to experience barbecue as close to its 19th century roots as possible? In a Houston Press piece, Robb Walsh has the perfect insight on where to look.

For the past few years, I have been crisscrossing the Old South documenting Southern barbecue culture. When I set out, I expected to trace American barbecue back to its roots in rural Southern restaurants. But in my research, I found the ancient artisanal culinary culture I was searching for has been much better preserved in community barbecues.

Walsh visits a fundraiser for a German singing society and a community barbecue hosted by the Sons of Hermann Lodge. My favorite part is where the old timer scoffs at the new fangled metal "baskets" used to hold the cooking meat, preferring instead the old-school seven foot metal rods. Classic stuff.

Scenes from Scott's Variety Store

This weekend, CBS producer in tow, I made a trek up Highway 41 to Hemingway to visit Scott's Variety Store, where Rodney Scott was gracious enough to give us a tour of his pits. Watch for the segment--a short piece on barbecue history--on CBS Sunday morning this upcoming weekend, July 15th.

Here are a few pics from the visit.

The Pit House

Order at the Counter

Mop Sauce

Mr. Rodney Scott tending the pigs

The pits

Burn barrel

The Pimento Cheese Trap

A Serious Burger with Pimento Cheese
(under that big blanket of lettuce somewhere)

My article this week for the Charleston City Paper delves into the perilous world of the gourmet burger and calls for a reformation.

One of the problems I identify with "the Serious Burger" (as I've dubbed the gourmet variety) is with the cheese. I didn't have space to ponder the subject of cheese too much in the article, but it's a thing that I've come across again and again and deserves addressing.

If you slap on a thin slice of American cheese on top of a burger, it gets soft right away and melts around the patty to form a smooth, soft coating. With fancier cheeses--like crumbles of bleu cheese or feta--you don't get that effect. The hunks and shards just don't melt properly, and leaving you with a burger with the textures all wrong.

It's a problem that is particularly pronounced with pimento cheese, creating what I like to call "The Pimento Cheese Trap."

 Virtually every Serious Burger joint in Charleston--and all over the South, for that matter--has stumbled into this trap.  You can see why they do it: what better way to gussy up a burger than to top it with a generous scoop of good old “Southern caviar”? You not only get some fancy cheese on the burger but also can tap right into the current hot trend for all things Southern. Instant class and hipness, all in the same scoop.

The problem is not with the pimento cheese itself but with the delivery. When it’s plunked onto the burger in a big cold scoop, the mere warmth of the patty isn’t enough to melt it, and, since most Serious Burger joints don't toast or griddle their buns, you’re left with a burger with big clumpy chunks of cool cheese on top. And it's just not all that pleasurable to eat.

Now, this doesn’t mean that one can’t make a good pimento cheese burger. It’s just that very few restaurants manage to pull it off.

The Rockaway Burger from Columbia’s Rockaway Athletic Club will always be the gold standard for me. Old Columbia residents maintain that the Rockaway Burger is but a pale shadow of the original pimento burger from the long-departed Dairy Bar, and I can't contest that, but the Rockaway Burger has the advantage of still being available on the market.

The burger comes to the table sliced in two, a toothpick speared in each half. The bun is warm and soft, the patty generous but not too thick, and—most important—the pimento cheese is melted completely so that it coats the burger and merges into the soft bun and oozes out in rich, golden drips as you bite into the thing.

Here's a pic from the Columbia Free Times of the Rockaway Burger in all its glory.

So here's a simple plea, burgermeisters: load up that bun with pimento cheese if you wish. But, pretty please, put that thing in a sandwich press or drop it straight on the griddle and melt that cheese good. Anything else is a sacrilege.

Pork Sandwich Showdown: Nouveau Yankee Que vs. Classic Southern Sandwiches

Check out these pics from the Boston Globe of the barbecue sandwiches at the Beantown barbecue joint called Tremont 467. Then, head over to Garden & Gun and peruse their photo lineup of the Top 21 BBQ Sandwiches in the South.  Notice any differences between North and South? (Ignore that one G&G pic of the Korean pork sandwich: it's "fusion" to begin with and comes from Atlanta, no less.)

Now, don't get me wrong. Those Boston boys probably cook up some pretty tasty barbecue. But what's up with the massive haystack of meat, the groaning bun, and drizzles of sauce on the plate.  And is that slaw or kimchi cascading out of the bun? It looks like someone might have dropped the damn thing.

Some time ago I weighed in on how to create a great barbecue sandwich, noting that it's "an exercise in balance, with just the right ratio of meat to sauce to bun."  And, you have to add in a little slaw or pickle to add crunch and tang. The picks from Garden & Gun are bear this out. Check out the spartan simplicity of Jackie Hite's entry from Leesville, SC; the balance of bun, meat, pickle, and onion from the Old Hickory Pitt Bar-B-Q in Owensboro, KY; and, the controlled heft of the sandwich from Red Bridges Barbecue Lodge in Shelby, NC.

There's a reason these are classics.

Contrary to Rumors, I Do NOT Have Gout

Two months ago I wrote an article for the City Paper about fresh local asparagus. One of my interviewees told me that he loved asparagus but had to stop eating it because it aggravated his gout. I didn't know asparagus aggravated the gout . . . in fact, I knew almost nothing about the gout at all. So I did a little Googling to educate myself. (Turns out asparagus does stir it up, by the way.)

Now, anytime I visit a site that has ads on it, I'm inundated by ads for gout remedy and gout studies and all things gout-related on every site I visit--including my own damn blog.

Let's clear this up once and for all. I DO NOT HAVE THE GOUT!

But, jeez, aren't those Google ads creepy? Careful what you search for.

And, yes, asparagus, it turns out, makes everyone's pee stinky, too. In fact, those people who think it doesn't have that effect on them simply, for some unknown reason, can't smell it. I would post a link to supporting information on this, but Lord only knows what ads that would unleash on my browser.  Google it yourself if you don't believe me.

Arkansas Barbecue

Rex Nelson has a good post on the topic "What is Arkansas Barbecue?" over on his Southern Fried blog.  He includes in it a nice excerpt from my contribution to 

The Slaw and the Slow Cooked: Culture and Barbecue in the Mid-South, a collection of essays from Vanderbilt University Press edited by Ted Maclin and Jim Veteto.  If you want to dig into the history of Arkansas BBQ, check it out.

Nelson also just wrote the preface for the Arkansas section of the Southern Foodways Alliance's Southern BBQ Trail, which is collection of oral histories of great barbecuers and restaurateurs from across the South. For Arkansas barbecue fans, there's now a treasure trove of information out there on the state's unique style.

The Charleston Gravy Train

I've been listening to Josh Ozersky being interviewed on Chris Gondek's University of Texas Press podcast about his book Colonel Sanders and the American Dream.  When discussing how difficult it is not just for KFC but for any restaurant to make good gravy, Ozersky says:

I'm a food writer who lives in New York City.  I eat out all the time.  And now we're in this wonderful lardcore renaissance and all these Southern chefs are trying to cook things here. None of them makes good pan gravy.  I haven't had a first-rate pan gravy since Sean Brock cooked chicken in a pan for me at Husk.

In other words, don't order gravy in New York. Come down here to Charleston.

Early Virginia Hams and Bacon

I've been reading the journal of Nicholas Cresswell, a young Englishman who came to Virginia in 1774 with the ambition of making a fortune as a planter. He got sideways with his neighbors after the Revolution broke out and he refused to support the rebellion.  Threatened with "Tar, Feathers, Imprisonment, and the D---l knows what," Cresswell fled Virginia in 1777 and ended up returning to England.

Before he departed, though, he captured in his journal this excellent account of the art of curing bacon and ham in Virginia:

The bacon cured here is not to be equalled in any part of the world, their hams in particular. They first rub them over with brown sugar and let them lie all night. This extracts the watery particles. They let them lie in salt for 10 days or a fortnight. Some rub them with hickory ashes instead of saltpetre, it makes them red as saltpetre and gives them a pleasant taste. Then they are hung up in the smoke-house and a slow smoky fire kept under them for three or four weeks, nothing but hickory wood is burnt in these smoke-houses. This gives them an agreeable flavor, far preferable to the Westphalia hams, not only that, but it prevents them from going rancid and will preserve them for several years by giving them a fresh smoking now and them.

The hogs, he noted, grew fat in the woods on a mast of "acorns, Walnuts, Chestnuts, and all wild fruits").

And now I'm officially hungry.

Scenes from Opening Day: Mt. Pleasant Farmer's Market

The Mt. Pleasant Farmer's Market opened for the season yesterday at Moultrie Middle School on Coleman Boulevard.  Here are a few scenes.

Of course, it wouldn't be a market without a little funnel cake:

The pick of the day: this remarkable asparagus from Ambrose Farms:

All in, my haul included some local ground lamb, Bull's blood beets, fresh asparagus, green garlic, and some magnificent strawberries.

The good eatin' time of the year has arrived.

Straw Man Beer

Writing over at CNN's Eatocracy blog, Nathan Berrong just posted a bit on beer and restaurants that made me pause. "Why do restaurants neglect beer?" he asks, arguing that it's hard to find amazing beer and great food in the same place. "Maybe the best restaurant in town serves Guinness," he states, and "I'm baffled when I go into a nice restaurant and the beer list mirrors the offerings of the convenience store down the street." Budweiser and Heineken are called out for particular abuse.

I paused to check the date on the piece.  It was April 3, 2012, not, as I first suspected, 2006.  My next question was, "where in the world is he eating?" No location in the dateline, but I did note that Berrong "works at CNN's satellite desk."  So, he might still be in orbit, which would make things understandable.

Because, frankly, I have no idea what he's talking about. Good beer is everywhere in good restaurants these days, and not just in Charleston (where, admittedly, we do have some culinary advantages) but just about every city I visit. Victory HopDevil is the new Budweiser, Allagash White the new Heineken.  It's quite typical to find anywhere for eight to two dozen really good beers on tap--a handful of locals and a bunch of craft/micros from all over the country, plus a few dozen more bottled names. And that offering is not just for the bar crowd: chefs are highly attuned to beer, too. It's  becoming quite common to see a beer or two slipped in among the wine pairing suggestions on menus, and it seems like there's a beer-paired dinner every three or four days here in Charleston.

About two years ago, as I reviewed restaurants around town, I would note with delight, "The bar has a deep line up of craft brews, too . . ." and list a few examples. These days I rarely even mention the beer selection because it almost goes without saying that they're going to have a deep line up of craft brews (and they have coffee, too, both regular and decaf, and your choice of sparkling, still, or tap water!).

Now, in Berrong's defense, he's really just creating a straw man that he then pounds to shreds by listing a bunch of restaurants in New York, San Francisco, Denver and cosmopolitan Decatur, Georgia (my birthplace!) that focus on craft beers and pair them with the meals. But, that straw man is getting pretty dusty and dry these days.

As the formerly encyclopedic wine list shrinks to a manageable page or two, and the attention to beer and cocktails increases, I predict that before long beer and wine will share equal billing at your typical "nice restaurant". Whether that's a good thing or not is a subject that's open for debate, but that seems to be where the winds are steering us.