When I read about the North Carolina BBQ Trail months ago, I knew exactly where Emily and I would be going on a road trip this year. Of course, with 25 restaurants on the trail and only 5 days of vacation, I knew we couldn't visit ALL of them, but goshdarnit, we sure were gonna do our best.
Emily picked me up from work Thursday night and we headed south in her Jetta. We stayed overnight with her cousin outside of DC and then it was off the next morning for our first BBQ stop - BUT FIRST we made a pitstop in Fredericksburg, Virginia for Carl's Frozen Custard. They still use an original frozen custard machine from the 1940s and DAMN it's good. The vanilla is like eating frozen whipped cream - And I know what frozen whipped cream tastes like, I used to secretly eat Cool Whip from the freezer with a spoon. Definitely worth the stop.
We stopped for late lunch/old fogie early bird dinner around 4:30 at Bill Ellis Barbeque in Wilson, NC- a buffet! Basically, you walk in, pay your entry fee and then go hog (ha, no pun intended) wild - but, as the signs around the restaurant remind you, "eat as much as you want, but eat what you take."
Now, North Carolina BBQ is all about pork. You've got your pig pickin' (which we had here) where you pull pork straight off a pit-smoked pig and, more often, chopped pork. Finely chopped pork looks almost like tuna salad, whereas the coarse choppped (my preference) is a little bit chunkier (duh). As for the sauce, it varies around the state (I will explain this more later) but is generally a thin sauce with a mostly vinegar base.
BUT, like I said, here we got to pull the meat straight from the dead pig. MMMmmmmm.
Bill has his own fleet of semi trucks to deliver his delicious pork nationwide - yippee!
With our bellies full we drove west toward Beufort, where we would relax on the beach and trade BBQ for seafood for a couple days...
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