Barbecue in the Carolinas

Many have called the Skylight Inn North Carolina's barbecue capital, and the faux dome on the roof seems to confirm the claim. The dome might as well be a steeple in this state, where Barbecue Presbyterian Church rises beside Barbecue Creek in Harnett County. North Carolinians revere this cuisine and routinely make pilgrimages to shrines such as Wilber's Barbecue in Goldsboro, King's Bar-B-Que in Kinston, Stamey's Barbecue in Greensboro, Bill Spoon's Barbecue in Charlotte, Alston Bridges Bar-B-Q in Shelby, and some 20 other 'cue cathedrals in Lexington. Barbecue is as much a source of city pride in Lexington as furniture.

The late C. Warner Stamey is credited with popularizing "Lexington-style" barbecue and mentoring young cooks who later opened their own places. They colored their tangy vinegar sauce (which they called "dip") with ketchup, and began mixing it into coarsely chopped meat and slaw.

Among other places, we sampled Barbecue Center, Speedy's Barbecue, Lexington Barbecue, Stamey's BBQ (no connection to the Greensboro restaurant), and Jimmy's Barbecue, where customers love both the food and the Harvey family who serves it. Working each day with Jimmy Harvey are his wife, Betty, daughters Karin and Kirksey, sons Terry and Kemp, and his grandchildren.

"People like to see Dad standing in the door," Terry remarks. Perhaps they feel reassured watching Jimmy teaching the hand-me-down gospel of Lexington-style barbecue to the next generation.

Southerners always have whispered treasured family barbecue secrets from one generation to the next. In Beaufort, South Carolina, at 5 p.m. on a July Saturday as hot and sticky as sauce itself, we watch an intergenerational, dawn-to-dusk ritual. With sweat soaking their shirts, Jim Gibson; his son, Josh; and their friend Ray Williams chop pork on a plywood board laid over two sawhorses in their backyard. Nearby stands a pit they built of 40 cinder blocks, with a grill near the top. Since 6 a.m., two sides of hogs have been cooking 3 feet above coals.

This is a "pig-picking" in which good barbecue is created through heavy lifting, perspiration, a little beer, and a lot of male bonding, Jim says. Then to accent the warm meat, he pours a concoction of tomato juice, Worcestershire sauce, vinegar, and red and black pepper over the coarsely chopped pork.