Slow Foods in North Carolina: a Vegetarian comes to Barbecue

By

Miles Efron

After living in the South for five years I recently determined to sample a local delicacy: hickory cooked North Carolina barbecue. Of course this was complicated by years of vegetarianism on my part. Food critic Jeffery Steingarten recalls how his vegetarian diet ended with a hot dog from Nathan's Famous in Brooklyn. Like Steingarten, my stint as a vegan would end in a nod to America's culinary vernacular. Unlike Steingarten's furtive, curbside chomping, however, I came to pork with premeditation and after sober reflection.

My decision to eat barbecue had its origin two years ago. While debating where to go for dinner, my friend politely sighed, "why don’t you choose? You're the picky eater." We ate sushi that night, but I didn't enjoy it. Instead, I rehashed her comment. True, I avoid animal products. But aside from that, I'll eat anything: wild morels, fiddlehead ferns, foraged amaranth. Experimentation, not provincialism, characterized my tastes, I liked to think. After all, I had tripped through tiendas in Los Angeles in search of burritos campesinos and soba dens in San Francisco, on the trail of the Platonic udon.

Could it be that I was wrong? Was I a picky eater? Over the years my diet had grown stricter, focusing on locally grown ingredients in efforts to spare the environment undue burden and to acquire the freshest produce possible. Had this tendency veered away from the noble and toward the compulsive? Anyone who uses the phrases "animal products" or "foraged amaranth" to describe his eating has cause to worry about gastronomic dandyism. To these doubts, one word presented itself: barbecue.

Aside from the pure vanity of eschewing the "picky eater" moniker, I chose to eat barbecue because I love food. In a market where a variety of fresh produce is available year round, a vegetarian diet grew naturally out of my fondness for flavorful, interesting meals. Though these meals contained no meat, I cooked them with all the obsessiveness of any food lover, puzzling over menus, dreaming about wine, tracking down exotic ingredients. I did avoid certain sections in the supermarket. But at heart, I was no less an omnivore than the meat-eater who harbors, say, an allergy to foods of the nightshade family.

Deciding to eat barbecue is easy, but it raises a paralyzing host of questions. Most importantly, where should you go to eat? In any region known for its barbecue, aficionados will argue the merits of one restaurant over another. But in North Carolina the problem is more complicated. As any good NC barbecue reference work (and there are several) will tell you, North Carolina barbecue falls into at least two major camps: Eastern and Piedmont (or Lexington) style. While all NC barbecue is made from pork, chefs east of Rocky Mount tend to use the entire hog, while those in the West limit themselves to pork shoulder. Perhaps more importantly, Eastern barbecue is made without tomatoes, sauced (if it is sauced at all) by a mixture of vinegar and pepper. In Lexington, on the other hand, the seasoning contains tomatoes, and often sugar, as well.

The debate over what constitutes "true" North Carolina barbecue focuses on this stylistic nuance. Loyalists of Lexington barbecue look askance at the pale Eastern fare, while denizens of the coastal plain suspect that so much tomato must be covering up for something. East of Rocky Mount of West? This is a barbecue novice's Catch-22. Citing contradictory advice on eating pork in our state, Calvin Trillin wrote that non-North Carolinians are "unlikely to make it to the right side of Rocky Mount."

To settle the matter I turned to experts. Consulting the canonical guides to NC barbecue by Jim Early and Bob Garner taught me a lot. For instance, many people's favorite restaurants are among a battery of hickory dens in Lexington, towards the central part of the state. Devotees of the Eastern school, on the other hand, enjoy any of about twenty restaurants. Not surprisingly, these are to be found in the East, mostly around Wilson, Rocky Mount, and Goldsboro. After dutiful reading, then, I had managed to narrow my search from roughly 200 eateries to about forty, still an unmanageable sample. Because each restaurant has obvious merits, choosing a particular establishment inevitably entails lost possibilities for a barbecue neophyte. To get the perfect slaw, would I have to sacrifice my hush puppies? Noting that you only get to eat your first barbecue once, novelist Milan Kundera bemoans “the unbearable lightness of being,” counseling his readers to eat the most delicious pork available. Of course this translation from the Czech is my own.

The economist Thorstein Veblen once wrote that expertise is a conspiracy against the laity. This is a handy quotation to keep on hand. It allowed me to drop out of graduate school once, while keeping my dignity. And now it allowed me to shrug off the advice of people who are perhaps too enamored of smoked pork to speak pragmatically to a wayward vegetarian. While I'm sure barbecue experts are well meaning in their baroque allegiances, I needed a concrete recommendation: first time eating pig? Go here.

For such advice, I enlisted several local friends. While not professional barbecue eaters, they had each sampled their fair share of pork. Over coffees, lunches, and breakfasts (all vegetarian), we hashed out the details of local ‘cue. I took notes. “What about this place?” I asked every time a new restaurant came onto my radar. “It’s really good,” my friends always responded.

“I forgot about Speedy’s,” they might say.

“So Speedy’s is good?”

“Sure…they have great Lexington barbecue.”

“Is it better than Wilber’s?”

“Wilber’s is Eastern. It’s totally different. But Wilber’s is really good. There’s also King’s; they’re really good, too."

When North Carolinians discuss barbecue, they are prone to swoon. Even the most urbane among them waxed ecstatic when given a forum for extolling smoked meat. People who have lived in New York—and one who lived in Istanbul—drawled like Daughters of the Confederacy about sweet tea ‘n slaw.

But after much hand-wringing consensus emerged. The consensus seemed to be that Allen and Son, just north of Chapel Hill, should be my destination. In choosing Allen and Son, my thinking focused on several factors. First, I elected to eat barbecue that was (more or less) Eastern style. After all, with no tomato in the equation, there would be nothing between me and meat—no filter or safety net. Second, after several interviews around Chapel Hill, and after reading many reviews it was clear that Keith Allen is a barbecue purist. By eating his fare, there really could be no regrets, as nobody disputed his skill and attention to tradition. Third, Allen and Son is a strong contender on the major variables that distinguish a barbecue restaurant: the meat, hush puppies, dessert, and ambience.

Finally, I chose Allen and Son because it is located near my house. North Carolina barbecue is special because it is a regional cuisine. Not unlike many vegetarians, barbecue purists are concerned with the authenticity of their product. This authenticity derives in large part from issues of place. Keith Allen is held in especially high regard because he splits his hickory on site and by hand, behind his restaurant, just up the road from my house.

Allen’s adherence to on-site preparation and its attendant accolades reminded me of the draw of the Carrboro farmers market, where I buy produce from the people who grow it. As I settled on Allen and Son, I realized that an affinity exists between my vegan appetite and the tastes of barbecue aficionados. Both approaches to food lean on the assumption that much of eating's appeal stems from its ability to remind us where we live, or least where we happen to find ourselves at a given moment.

Barbecue fanatics and vegans are purists. Above all they value authenticity in eating. For both groups, this authenticity derives in large part from matters of tradition and place. Such sentiment is well articulated in the literature of the so-called slow-foods movement. Eaters of slow food argue—between bites, I suppose—that contemporary culinary habits lean too heavily on the homogenous, perennially available wares of large corporations. To the omnipresence of Appleby's and Cracker Barrel, members of the slow foods movement respond by hosting "convivia," regularly scheduled meals at which are served food that has been lovingly prepared after being locally produced.

While "slow food" is a relatively young phrase (coined by the Italian Carlo Petrini in 1985 but brought into vogue by a spate of more recent publications), many of the ideas it implies have long been familiar to vegetarians and to barbecue fans. I had decided to eat pork at Allen and Son restaurant because Keith Allen serves authentic food. That authenticity is the coin of the realm in barbecue circles put me at ease. Although I was headed into unfamiliar territory, gastronomically speaking, I could reassure myself that in Keith Allen I had put my trust in a man versed in the value of slow food.

With the crucial matter of venue settled, I wasted no time. Last Friday I ate lunch at Allen and Son Barbecue. This was a warm-up for pork. Years of a vegetarian eating found me grazing near the bottom of the food chain, and it's a long way from whole grains to whole hog. For the vegan interested in barbecue, some practice is needed. So I ordered resourcefully.

Not yet ready for the other white meat I settled for a patchwork of sides: hush puppies, slaw, and fried okra. But really, I came for the hush puppies. They provided the perfect medium on which to practice eating meat again. Put bluntly, that medium is oil: fried in lard, hush puppies leave a sheen on the napkin, lubricating this vegan's slippery slope toward omnivorousness.

As I chomped my first hush puppy it shattered, crumbling sweet cornmeal over the green and white tablecloth. Like many of my favorites, the hush puppy is a two-stage food. Its cratered shell crunched with the first bites. But as my molars began their work, the dough yielded a mellow, chewy texture. As this transformation unfolded, the flavor grew into lush sweetness.

Of course two-stage foods are nothing new to a vegetarian. Fresh figs and crusty bread both change character mid-chew. The key to delicious schizophrenia in food is freshness; no fig has such leathery skin and liquid flesh as one eaten in the shade of a mission fig tree. Likewise, the counterpoint between a baguette's crust and its interior is greatest in the hours just after cooling from the oven. Quality of ingredients doesn't hurt, either.

In Allen and Son's hush puppies, then, I found myself on surprisingly familiar terrain. Flanked by two companions (happily noshing on fresh fried flounder), I took in the scene: framed prints of outdoor life, taxidermic odds and ends, and a lunch-time rush of very serious eaters. Allen and Son is a shrine to good, authentic food.

After several days of rest and girding of my loins (not to mention the un-girding of some poor hog’s), last night I piled into the car with my wife and a friend of ours, ready to eat barbecue. We drove, the sun slanting westward, into the countryside just north of Chapel Hill. With some chagrin I noted that this was the very road I took many times to meditate (and even to eat) at the Chapel Hill Zen Center. At least, I consoled myself, no one from the sangha is likely to blow my cover tonight.

Finally, the decisions were over. I placed my order: a barbecue sandwich with slaw Despite my tough talk, I wasn't ready for the sheer quantity of meat that comes with a plate. After some nervous chatting, the food arrived, and there I was, mano a mano with a pulled pork dinner. The smell of vinegar mingled with the more exotic essence of charred hickory. Frontmost in this bouquet was the aroma—no, let's be frank, the odor—of meat. Tendrils, fibers, and smoke-addled edges of pork were everywhere. This was a dish that I had read about. But as the poet Elizabeth Bishop writes, "the map is not the territory," and the time had come to quit reading and start chewing.

So I let nature take its course. I ate the sandwich.

True to plan, the tomatoless Eastern barbecue allowed me an intimate taste of the meat itself. The hickory smoke played a role in the overall flavor, as did the subtle, peppery vinegar wash that I splashed on the sandwich somewhat desperately. But mainly the flavor was of pork. It was a flavor that I remembered not so much from my mother's table or an all-American diner. Rather the pork reminded me of a smoked morsel I had eaten years ago in a dim sum parlor in San Francisco. At the time I asked the waiter what the dish was. He responded in Chinese and pointed at a sign on the restaurant wall (also in Chinese). For years I wondered at these inscrutable pictographs, and only now did I suspect that they might translate: "Eastern North Carolina pulled pork barbecue."

Nobody—least of all me—thought that I would finish dinner that night. But I inhaled my barbecue sandwich. Within minutes dinner was over and it was time for dessert. Having dined at Allen and Son twice now, with four separate companions, I have sampled five of their confections. I chalk this up not to gluttony, but to research. These desserts, which I have arranged in order from least to most, oh let's call it "intense," are:

1. key lime cake (color of a MacDonald’s shamrock shake)

2. bread pudding

3. peanut butter pie

4. coconut chess pie

5. banana pudding

All of these desserts I shared with other people, except the banana pudding, which I monopolized because everyone else was afraid of it. Served in a low-slung crockery, the banana pudding was an undulous gray syrup suspended between a layer of cake (lady fingers, I think) and airy gobbets of meringue.

Eating dessert would be easy, I had reasoned. To the recently pork-fed vegan, what challenge could some cream puff offer? In the face of banana pudding, however, such bravado shriveled. In fact the most foreign moments of my time in Allen and Son came during dessert.

As a health-conscious foody, I am doubly disadvantaged vis a vis an Allen and Son pudding. The desserts that I am used to are almost invariably austere. This is due either to reasons of nutrition (too much sugar is bad for you) or sophistication (too much sugar is gauche). No vegan peanut butter cookie would dare mount such an affront to the pancreas. And most "ultra-decadent" chocolate cakes resemble nothing so much as a wedge of chilled creosote.

On the other hand, Allen and Son's banana pudding was supersaturated with highly refined sugar. It caused my teeth to ache and made my temples feel funny. Simultaneously rich and blazingly sweet, It was profoundly delicious, and I ate every bite of it.

For those who have been duped by the myth that a vegetarian somehow looses the ability to digest meat, I can say that I suffered no harsh consequence for my omnivorous field trip. While this was obviously a relief (to me and my wife), it leaves a difficult question unanswered: what next? Am I still a vegetarian? Was I really a vegetarian before if I so brazenly dined on hog? Will I eat barbecue again? Perhaps to avoid confronting these thorny matters directly, I have focused my attention on a more pressing issue: when does the State Fair begin, and what should I eat first on the midway?