"Like everything in South Carolina, we cook barbeque cantankerously. We smoke our meat with hundreds of opinions and often with a sense of injured pride."
That's the opening line to a new blog post on the state of barbecue in the U.S. Eatocracy.com, the food-related website from news network CNN, has been running the series of blog posts from the Southern Foodways Alliance in advance of this week's annual Southern Foodways Symposium, where the subject is (once again) barbecue.
I end up fielding a lot of heat and flash around N.C. barbecue, but our brethren in South Carolina are just a few miles down the road and have barbecue opinions that are just as heated. I myself have made many stops at Sweatman's Barbecue near Florence, strictly in the interest of paying due diligence to understanding that mustard-based sauce. As the SFA blog post says,"The whole state is a big messy spill of sauces."
I'm headed out on the road Tuesday, first to New York for the James Beard Foundation Leadership Awards, which I chair, and then on to Oxford, Miss., for the Southern Foodways Symposium. I'll tweet all the way and will bring back as much wisdom as I encounter.
In the meantime, give the Eatocracy.com post a read and see what you think. N.C. barbecue brings heated debate. Anyone want to join in with an opinion on S.C. 'cue?
I can live with the mustard based sauce, but the stuff they pass as BBQ hash at the Beacon is not fit for human consumption.
ReplyDeleteI love vinegar based and tomato based BBQ sauce but don't offer me mustard sauce I would rather go hungry.
ReplyDeleteI'm a western NC native who was, at first, skeptical of the South Carolina barbecue. But to my surprise, I enjoyed what I found in the Palmetto State. The mustard-based sauce is actually pretty good.
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