Until about a month ago, barbecue didn't even show up on my What to Eat list when visiting family in North Carolina. It's not that I'm so attached to the wide-ranging variety of Texas-style BBQ, it's that it was always hard to wrap my head around a culinary aesthetic that seemed so obsessed with its own joylessly austere rules.
In the Carolinas, when "barbecue" appears on a menu, it means pork and pork only (as in no beef, no chicken, no links, no ribs, no brisket). It is slow-cooked. There is no sauce except a cup of thin vinegary liquid'referred to simply as dip'that you're allowed to dunk your meat into.
But on a recent trip to Charlotte, my husband and I took the advice of food critic and friend, Robert Sietsema, and drove to tiny Lexington, 55 miles away, the self-proclaimed "Barbecue Capitol of the World," famous for its hickory smoked pork. Sure enough, Lexington-style BBQ is all about the "no's." Here, they use the pork shoulder only, which is salted before cooking but never, ever basted while pit-smoking for eight or nine hours over oak or hickory coals.
Your ordering choices boil down to, "sandwich or plate?" and how you'd like your meat cut'coarse-chopped, fine-chopped, or sliced?" Did the smiling, agreeable servers ("Look who's here, Lah-vurne and Shurrrrley!" is how a drawling waitress greeted a pair of middle-aged gal regulars at the Barbecue Center), or the fact that I was in a pig-worshipping town, have anything to do with my happier experience? I'm not sure.
But whether tucked inside of a soft bun with tart, red, mayo-less coleslaw or hacked up with a cleaver and positioned on your plate in unadorned chunks, you could always taste hardwood flavor in each bite of the moist, fatty shoulder meat at any of the 20-some restaurants in town (the other favorite being Jimmy's). As we drove back towards Charlotte, I felt as if I'd just had a Carolina barbecue revelation so full-blown that it could have been accompanied by shimmering harp strings and an oinking Hallelujah Chorus.
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