Goldsboro, N.C. – Being a traveling food writer and a college-football reporter, I find myself eating barbecue a lot. From a culinary standpoint it gets a little old, and from a health standpoint it gets a little heavy.
I’ve had wet smoke barbecue chicken in Driftwood, Texas, pulled pork in Starkville, Miss., glistening ribs in Houston and brisket in Birmingham, Ala. I paid homage to the colossal barbecue joint of the South, Rendezvous in Memphis, Tenn.
An Alabama reader threatened my life after I labeled Dreamland of Tuscaloosa the “most overrated BBQ” in America. I picked up my Texas Longhorns media guide the other day, and it still had a pinto bean in it.
I am porked out. College football season doesn’t even start for three more months. However, it’s soccer season for the entire planet. The World Cup in Germany kicks off in 16 days, and I found myself in Raleigh, N.C., near the U.S. World Cup team’s training camp. Hmm. North Carolina. What is its state food? I did some checking and … shoot!
Barbecue.
My contacts could feel me cringe but told me North Carolina barbecue – eastern North Carolina barbecue to be exact – is different. While Lexington-style barbecue, named for the midstate town, uses a tomato sauce, the eastern style, they told me, is based on vinegar. I immediately asked if they were kidding.
A friend told me “it’s an acquired taste.” Great. They say the same thing about tripe. I had just eaten roasted ant tarts and scorpion-covered bell peppers with the Explorers Club. How much more abuse could I take? Couldn’t North Carolina specialize in chateaubriand?
But with a heavy sigh and an empty stomach, I pointed my rental car from the Raleigh airport southeast 65 miles toward Goldsboro and the epicenter of eastern North Carolina barbecue, Wilber’s Barbecue. Wilber’s, a long, one-story red-
brick building with a big American flag dutifully flying overhead, has been the pit stop of President Bush, Bill Clinton, Jesse Helms and every other politician who has used eastern North Carolina barbecue to impress voters. USA Today recently listed it as one of the top 10 barbecue joints in America.
Inside Wilber’s I sat down in one of the rows of red-and-
white gingham tablecloths under open wood beams. The menu looked like an official warning from the surgeon general on cholesterol: fried gizzards, fried livers, fried livers and gizzards, toasted cheese sandwich. Plus the senior citizen special: hot dog, baked potato and hush puppies: $1.99.
Just reading I could feel my arteries stiffen like sludge through a garden hose.
I asked the waitress for the house specialty, and with the autopilot spontaneity of Pavlov’s dog she pointed out the barbecued pork. Surrounded by coleslaw, applesauce and hush puppies, it was like no barbecue I’d ever seen. It was a pile of twisting white meat. It looked dry as abalone.
I asked the waitress if there was any sauce. She said, “It’s on it. If you want more, here.” She pointed out a canister that looked just like the one that holds my vinegar at home. That’s right. Vinegar.
But after one bite I realized it’s not an acquired taste. Eastern North Carolina barbecue is tangy, sweet and, above all, light. It concentrates on the method, in which the whole hog is smoked, not simply smothered in sauce.
I devoured the whole pile and never felt bloated, unlike at Salt Lick in Driftwood, where they needed to smear mayonnaise on the inside of the doorway to get me outside. (That’s a compliment, guys. Please, no death threats.)
The next day, I called Wilber. Inspired by his father’s barbecues during family reunions, Wilber Shirley bought the place in 1962. Back then, eastern North Carolina barbecue was the one dish that even Jim Crow couldn’t resist. Barbecue joints were one of the few places where blacks and whites in North Carolina ate at the same table.
“By and large it’s been a thing where everyone could come together and eat BBQ, both blacks and whites,” said Shirley, 75. “It never bothered me. I couldn’t tell the difference between people because they were all enjoying barbecue.”
In fact, vinegar-based barbecue has been bringing together people from all races for more than four centuries. The origins aren’t documented, but it’s said Jamaicans used vinegar-based sauce as early as 1661. Pirates may have brought the tradition they picked up in the Caribbean to the shores of North Carolina, a perfect way to break up the monotony of pillaging and looting.
The keys are the seasonings in the vinegar, Shirley said. North Carolinians put in just about anything in their spice rack: red pepper, cayenne pepper, onion powder, garlic, nutmeg, molasses, brown sugar, even whiskey.
While eastern North Carolina barbecue won me over, who was the moron from Mars who invented the hush puppy? What’s a hush puppy? It’s fried cornmeal. Think about that. They come in finger-shaped dough balls that taste like sweetened lard. At Ole Time Barbecue, a wonderful little barbecue shack in Raleigh, accompanying my luscious barbecue pork sandwich was a basket of hush puppies. With butter.
These things make McDonald’s fries seem like carrot sticks. Unlike eastern North Carolina barbecue, hush puppies are an acquired taste I won’t inquire about again.
John Henderson can be reached at 303-820-1299 or jhenderson@denverpost.com.
