Category North Carolina
12 Bones Smokehouse – Asheville, NC
As the pandemic changed most people’s plans, it also changed ours. Early in the year, one of our camping friends called and said, “if we want to make reservations to camp in Maine around the 4th of July, the six month window opens today!” So the planning began – reservations in Acadia National Park, then […]
Haywood Smokehouse – Dillsboro, NC
Camping with some friends near Cherokee, NC, we were discussing lunch, at breakfast. (Come on – you know you’ve done it, too. I heard a great quote about this point, this week, “Why don’t we go get lunch and talk about dinner?”). Looking for options, the one couple among us with any bars of phone […]
Snappy Lunch – Mt. Airy, NC
While in Wilkesboro, NC, for MerleFest, we went roaming one day to Mt. Airy. Most famous as the hometown of Andy Griffith, it is promoted as a modern-day Mayberry – right down to Floyd’s barber shop and a Mayberry police car parked on Main Street. But we were there for a different purpose – the […]
Buxton Hall Bar-B-Cue – Asheville, NC
For the last several years, one of the barbecue places I’ve seen a lot of buzz about is Buxton Hall Bar-B-cue, in Asheville, NC. Chef /pit-master Elliott Moss opened Buxton Hall in 2015, in partnership with Meherwan Irani (of Chai Pani), bringing South Carolina whole hog barbecue to Western North Carolina. Housed in a former […]
Price’s Chicken Coop – Charlotte, NC
Before heading back home from a business trip to Charlotte, I had questioned a couple of the local attendees at the meetings about Charlotte institutions that we might not know about. One of them mentioned Price’s Chicken Coop, which has been serving up hot, fresh fried chicken since 1962. They were already on my radar […]
Brook’s Sandwich House – Charlotte, NC
As I’ve stated before, the impetus for this blog began with discovering the first edition of George Motz’s Hamburger America, during a lunch in 2007. I decided that I’d make it one of my goals to eat as many of the 100 “best hamburgers” in the US, as I could, over the coming years. The […]
Alston Bridges Barbecue – Shelby, NC
Not to be confused with the excellent Red Bridges, also in Shelby, Alston Bridges Barbecue has also been open for years. But there is no relation between the two restaurants, and their founders – other than that they both learned their craft at the pit of NC legend Warner Starney. Walking into the counter area, […]
South 21 – Charlotte, NC
Going back to the original Hamburger America list, as we were driving through Charlotte this evening we swung into South 21 for a quick dinner. “Swung in” is a bit of an understatement as it involved an exit, a u-turn and a return onto a divided six-lane highway, but you get the idea. They’ve […]
Red Bridges Barbecue Lodge – Shelby, NC
Red Bridge Barbecue Lodge, in Shelby, is one of the icons of North Carolina barbecue. In fact, they had recently won a barbecue bracket contest (think of a NCAA tournament bracket) sponsored by Garden & Gun magazine, as the national barbecue champion. You can check out the bracket here. You’ll notice several places we’ve visited […]
Burgers, Barbecue and Everything Else 