October 14, 2008 Edibles » Cover Story

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Eating high on the hog in Charlotte 

What is Carolina BBQ?

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click to flip through (2) ANGUS LAMOND - Mmmmm, barbeque
 

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One of the original families responsible for cooking the barbecue that's served at the Mallard Creek Presbyterian Church is the Oehlers. From the experience at the church emerged a catering company. Donnie Oehler, grandson of one of the founding cooks at the first MCPC barbecues, says his family got into on-site catering for social events from those church barbecues and is the oldest barbecue catering company in the county. Today their company, the Mallard Creek BBQ Catering Company, no longer does on-site catering. Instead Oehler made the decision to build a catering facility on his farmland in 1988. They cook Eastern-styled barbecue: just the "meat, vinegar, and a little salt and pepper." Oehler says his barbecue is good because he cooks the whole pig over hickory wood. "We don't just flavor the meat with hickory smoke. We cook the meat with hickory wood. That's the difference." He does offer various types of sauces saying that his wife is from South Carolina and likes the mustard barbecue sauce. "It's what you grow up with," Oehler says.

In Charlotte, though, there isn't much evidence of indigenous brick-and-mortar -- or wood-and-tin-roof -- barbecue joints like the kind you find along the roadways of much of the South. The oldest barbecue establishments here were started in the 1950s when Charlotte was moving towards being an urban center. People from the eastern side of the state, Georgia, and Greece relocated here to open barbecue restaurants.

New locally owned barbecue establishments are the products of either savvy restaurateurs who realized that comfort food has financial rewards or amateur pit masters who have turned avocations into vocations. The latter is producing mouthwatering examples of regional barbecue in this century.

One such place is Alfred & Charlie's BBQ House in Gastonia. Standing out back by one of his made-to-order cookers, owner Alfred Current wryly commented that 10 years ago he took an enjoyable weekend hobby and converted it into a full-time, time-consuming business. Located in a charming old house, Alfred's place is known for its flavorful meat. This is one of the few places you can smell the 'cue cooking.

This distinction is worthy of note. It's the smoke coming from the hickory wood cooking the meat for a half day or more that produces the best barbecue.

My dad, who taught me how to have a nose for 'cue, said the only barbecue eateries that he would drive into were those that he could smell from his car. We visited hundreds of those mom-and-pop shops throughout the Southeast; places with names co-opted on a Coca-Cola advertisement, with pictures of smiling pigs, dancing pigs, even angelic pigs. Most of those places were located on old state highways with small buildings -- places my dad knew of from his days as a traveling rep. Some of those places were in North Carolina, like Skylight Inn in Ayden and Lexington Barbecue in Lexington. The typical configuration of these restaurants was a small white or brick building with a large counter for takeout and a larger room in the back or off to the side for dining. Behind this building was a very large pile of hickory wood and smoke. Lots of smoke. The smoke wrapped the building.

"Be careful to notice the wood piles," my dad cautioned. "If you see mostly old graying wood and cobwebs, this place is all about the show."

I learned that being a true 'cue aficionado is not like rooting for a sports team since it's not about one team. Barbecue, like accents, varies throughout the South. And like Southern accents, the diversity of barbecue is lessening. Places that used to use hickory wood to cook the meat have turned to gas rotisseries and then flavor the meat by smoking hardwood.

But one place in Charlotte that has always cooked over wood is the Old Hickory House Restaurant. I get into many heated discussions about why I pick a non-North Carolinian styled barbecue for "Best Barbecue" in CL's annual Best of Charlotte issue. But the reason is the wood.

The Old Hickory House cooks their meat -- Boston butts and shoulders -- over hickory wood. It's the smell of my childhood's barbecue, and like Donnie Oehler noted, people prefer the sauce of their youth. The sauce here is distinctly from Alabama/Georgia. It shouldn't come as a surprise that my dad's barbecue recipes are from Alabama, and I grew up in Atlanta. But the Old Hickory is worthy of note because this is one of the last places I know of that actually cooks (and is grandfathered from health and fire codes) the meat in the dining room. You can smell the barbecue outside the building and in the dining room.

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