Old-School North Carolina BBQ Is Still Impressing

We loved our visits to Lexington Barbecue and Red Bridges Barbecue Lodge, both full of history and delicious bites.

Between family and work obligations, Sean and I find it increasingly difficult to find time to go on the epic BBQ road trips we frequently used to enjoy. So when we both found ourselves with some free time earlier this year, we jumped at the chance to travel.

In recent years, we’ve had several opportunities to explore the BBQ scenes in Kansas City, Texas, and New York in quite some depth. We have been making a conscious effort to include more content from the Carolinas and decided a joint trip to the Carolinas was in order, allowing us to visit both old-school and new-school restaurants from our bucket lists. We also wanted to visit our friends Monk from the Barbecue Bros, and Paige, designer for The Smoke Sheet newsletter.

Rather than covering our entire trip in one article, we’ve opted to split it up into multiple features. In this issue, I am writing about the old-school, iconic BBQ joints we were able to visit on this trip. Next week, Sean will highlight the new spots that have burst onto the scene more recently.

We were happy that our first stop for this North Carolina trip was the iconic Lexington Barbecue. (Photo by Ryan Cooper)

In our first full day in North Carolina, we made the drive from Charlotte to Lexington, a city famous for having its own style of North Carolina barbecue. Lexington-style barbecue (also known as Western or Piedmont style) differs from the Eastern North Carolina-style whole hog barbecue in that only the pork shoulder is used, and the sauce (or dip) uses a touch of tomato. The tomato-based sauce is also incorporated into the red slaw (or barbecue slaw), which is a unique side dish in the region.

Warner Stamey of Stamey’s is the father of Lexington-style BBQ. He defined what this style came to be and trained famous pitmasters Wayne Monk and Red Bridges (more on them below).

The small town of Lexington boasts a number of acclaimed barbecue restaurants, but we chose to go to perhaps the most famous of them all — Lexington Barbecue #1, located on Smokehouse Lane. The restaurant, which is located inside a white building with iconic brick smokestacks, was started by Wayne Monk in 1962.