The Best Bites at the Second Annual Jon G's Jubilee

This North Carolina event is part barbecue festival and part birthday celebration, and you should try to go next year.

This week’s guest article is written by Monk, a native of North Carolina and co-founder of the Barbecue Bros blog. Along with his friends and fellow Barbecue Bros Speedy and Rudy, Monk has traveled around eating, rating, ranking, and reviewing barbecue joints since 2012. If you would like to write a guest article for The Smoke Sheet, please get in touch.

The Jon G's Jubilee is part barbecue festival and part birthday celebration, with the first edition in 2023 created in honor of the 40th birthday of co-owner and pitmaster Garren Kirkman. This year, I made my way to Jon G's Barbecue around 4 p.m. on a Saturday in late June — which, by the way, is an odd feeling if you've ever woken up at the crack of dawn to leave for a Barbecue Saturday in Peachland — for this year's edition of the Jubilee. This edition featured contributions from N. Sea Oyster Co., Lawrence Barbecue, Elliott Moss, and, of course, Jon G's Barbecue.

Most attendees at the Jubilee started with oysters from N. Sea Oyster Co. from Hampstead, which is located near Topsail Beach on the North Carolina coast. They offered both raw and barbecued oysters that were cooked on a Kudu grill next to the tent. The oysters were a touch on the small side for my liking but the raw with a "hog wash mignonette" were nice and briney while the barbecued with a chipotle bourbon butter were sublime.

Lawrence Barbecue's beef-fat caramel wings were probably the food highlight of the evening for me. If I recall correctly, beef fat drippings from briskets are rendered into a caramel sauce with sugar and cumin, and then that is what the wings are dipped in after they are fried. These don't appear to be a regular menu item at their shop in Durham but if they are ever on special, grab a friend and get as many as you can. Just ridiculously tasty.