https://nanobotco.github.io/carolina-barbecue/2026-09-16T00:00:00ZNaNhttps://nanobotco.github.io/carolina-barbecue/style/eastern-nc/2026-09-16T00:00:00Z

The whole pig, split and cooked over coals or on a gas or electric cooker, then chopped — skin, ham, shoulder, loin and belly together, 'every part of the hog except the squeal' — and dressed after cooking with a thin…

https://nanobotco.github.io/carolina-barbecue/style/sc-heavy-tomato/2026-09-16T00:00:00Z

Pork shoulders and butts, ribs and chicken cooked over hickory or on cookers and served with a thick, sweet, red sauce of tomato, brown sugar or molasses, vinegar and spices — the sauce the state tourism office says you…

https://nanobotco.github.io/carolina-barbecue/sauce/bone-suckin-sauce/2026-09-16T00:00:00Z

A Raleigh line of bottled sauces, of which the one that built the brand is Sweet Southern: cane sugar first, tomato puree second, water third, apple cider vinegar fourth, at six grams of sugar to the tablespoon.

https://nanobotco.github.io/carolina-barbecue/sauce/carolina-treet/2026-09-16T00:00:00Z

A Wilmington sauce that fits none of the four Carolina bases. Its label reads water, vinegar, wheat flour, salt, soybean oil, paprika, garlic, onion, xanthan gum, spices — no tomato, no mustard, no sugar.

https://nanobotco.github.io/carolina-barbecue/sauce/georges-barbecue-sauce/2026-09-16T00:00:00Z

A bottled sauce from Nashville, North Carolina, a Nash County town on the edge of the Coastal Plain, sold in three strengths: Original, Hot and Special.

https://nanobotco.github.io/carolina-barbecue/sauce/golding-farms-sauces/2026-09-16T00:00:00Z

A Winston-Salem sauce manufacturer, the second of that city's two, and one whose output mostly reaches a table under someone else's name.

https://nanobotco.github.io/carolina-barbecue/sauce/heavy-tomato-sauce/2026-09-16T00:00:00Z

A thick red sauce built on tomato — ketchup, paste or sauce — sweetened with brown sugar or molasses, soured with vinegar and seasoned with spices, cooked down until it clings.

https://nanobotco.github.io/carolina-barbecue/sauce/lexington-dip/2026-09-16T00:00:00Z

The Piedmont's sauce: the east's vinegar, salt, pepper and red pepper with ketchup or tomato and water added, sometimes sugar, so that it comes out thin and reddish — tangy, a little sweet or hot by the house, and every…

https://nanobotco.github.io/carolina-barbecue/sauce/light-tomato-sauce/2026-09-16T00:00:00Z

Vinegar-and-pepper sauce with ketchup added — enough to redden and sweeten it a little, not enough to thicken it — and often cayenne or a bottled hot sauce.

https://nanobotco.github.io/carolina-barbecue/sauce/maurices-southern-gold/2026-09-16T00:00:00Z

The mustard sauce of Maurice's Piggie Park at West Columbia, sold in bottles, half gallons and gallons alongside the family's Hickory Red, Vinegar and Hot Pepper sauces.

https://nanobotco.github.io/carolina-barbecue/sauce/melvins-golden-sauce/2026-09-16T00:00:00Z

The mustard sauce of Melvin's Bar-B-Que in Charleston, sold in 16-ounce glass bottles, half gallons and gallons, beside the house's Southern Red, Sweet Red and Vinegar sauces.

https://nanobotco.github.io/carolina-barbecue/sauce/mustard-sauce/2026-09-16T00:00:00Z

Prepared yellow mustard thinned with vinegar and sweetened with sugar or brown sugar, with black and red pepper and whatever else the house keeps to itself — Bessinger's bottled version listed mustard, brown sugar, soy…

https://nanobotco.github.io/carolina-barbecue/sauce/sam-jones-sauce/2026-09-16T00:00:00Z

A bottled line from the whole-hog house Sam Jones opened at Winterville in 2015, third generation of the Skylight Inn family at Ayden.

https://nanobotco.github.io/carolina-barbecue/sauce/scotts-barbecue-sauce/2026-09-16T00:00:00Z

A bottled eastern North Carolina sauce — vinegar-based, the recipe kept secret, sold as sugar-free and fat-free — made by the Scott family of Goldsboro since the mid-1940s from a recipe the Rev.

https://nanobotco.github.io/carolina-barbecue/sauce/texas-pete/2026-09-16T00:00:00Z

A cayenne-pepper hot sauce made by the T.W. Garner Food Company of Winston-Salem, North Carolina, since 1929 — mild as hot sauces go, 747 on the Scoville scale — in a flip-top bottle with a red cowboy on a…

https://nanobotco.github.io/carolina-barbecue/sauce/vinegar-pepper-sauce/2026-09-16T00:00:00Z

Vinegar — cider or white — with salt, black pepper and crushed red pepper, and nothing else in its plainest form; some houses add sugar, a bottled hot sauce or lemon.

https://nanobotco.github.io/carolina-barbecue/sauce/wells-hog-heaven/2026-09-16T00:00:00Z

A vinegar-based sauce made at Burgaw, the seat of Pender County in southeastern North Carolina, and sold in that corner of the state.

https://nanobotco.github.io/carolina-barbecue/dish/baked-beans/2026-09-16T00:00:00Z

White beans — navy or pea beans — cooked slow in a sweet brown sauce of molasses or brown sugar with pork in it, and served hot in a cup or a compartment of the tray.

https://nanobotco.github.io/carolina-barbecue/dish/blenheim-ginger-ale/2026-09-16T00:00:00Z

A ginger ale bottled at Hamer, in Dillon County, South Carolina, made with Jamaica ginger and sugar in mineral water from a spring in Marlboro County, and hot enough that the heat is the point of it.

https://nanobotco.github.io/carolina-barbecue/dish/collards/2026-09-16T00:00:00Z

Broad flat leaves of a loose-headed cabbage, stripped from the stem, cut in ribbons and stewed a long time with a piece of smoked pork until they are dark and soft, in a salty broth the South calls pot liquor.

https://nanobotco.github.io/carolina-barbecue/dish/dukes-mayonnaise/2026-09-16T00:00:00Z

A bottled mayonnaise made in Mauldin, South Carolina, outside Greenville: egg yolks, oil and cider vinegar, with more yolk than most brands and no added sugar, which is where the tang comes from that the company sells…

https://nanobotco.github.io/carolina-barbecue/dish/fried-okra/2026-09-16T00:00:00Z

Okra pods sliced into rounds, rolled in cornmeal and fried until the outside is crisp.

https://nanobotco.github.io/carolina-barbecue/dish/green-beans/2026-09-16T00:00:00Z

Whole or broken pods of the common bean, stewed slow with a piece of pork until they give up their squeak and take on the meat's salt, and served in a cup or a compartment beside the barbecue.

https://nanobotco.github.io/carolina-barbecue/dish/mac-and-cheese/2026-09-16T00:00:00Z

Macaroni in a cheese sauce, most often cheddar, baked in a dish until the top browns.

https://nanobotco.github.io/carolina-barbecue/dish/peach-cobbler/2026-09-16T00:00:00Z

Sliced peaches sweetened and thickened in a deep dish and covered with a crust — pastry, biscuit dough or a batter — then baked until the top browns and the fruit bubbles at the edge.

https://nanobotco.github.io/carolina-barbecue/dish/pickles/2026-09-16T00:00:00Z

Cucumbers held in brine or vinegar until they sour, sliced into rounds or spears and put on the plate beside the meat, with the sandwich, or loose in a dish on the table.

https://nanobotco.github.io/carolina-barbecue/dish/potato-salad/2026-09-16T00:00:00Z

Boiled potatoes cut up cold and dressed with mayonnaise, with hard-boiled egg, onion, celery, sweet pickle or relish and often a spoon of yellow mustard that colours the whole bowl.

https://nanobotco.github.io/carolina-barbecue/place/12-bones-smokehouse/2026-09-16T00:00:00Z

A mountain barbecue house now trading from Hendersonville Road in Arden, south of Asheville, after Hurricane Helene took its River Arts District room in September 2024.

https://nanobotco.github.io/carolina-barbecue/place/allen-and-son/2026-09-16T00:00:00Z

The hickory-fired pork-shoulder restaurant on Millhouse Road at N.C. 86 north of Chapel Hill that Keith Allen opened in 1971 at nineteen and closed in the first week of December 2018, quietly, to avoid a long goodbye.

https://nanobotco.github.io/carolina-barbecue/place/alston-bridges-barbecue/2026-09-16T00:00:00Z

The Shelby pork-shoulder house of the other Bridges family, on East Grover Street in Cleveland County, where Alston Bridges and his wife Mabel bought the property in 1955.

https://nanobotco.github.io/carolina-barbecue/place/backyard-bbq-pit/2026-09-16T00:00:00Z

A Black-owned barbecue restaurant on N.C. 55, the Apex Highway, in southeast Durham, opened in April 2007 by Fabianne and Melvin Simmons, who bought a struggling restaurant and made it a neighborhood institution…

https://nanobotco.github.io/carolina-barbecue/place/bar-b-q-center/2026-09-16T00:00:00Z

A pork-shoulder pit and ice-cream counter on North Main Street in Lexington, Davidson County, that began in 1955 as a dairy bar, put a shoulder on a pit one slow winter, and has been the Conrad family's since: Sonny…

https://nanobotco.github.io/carolina-barbecue/place/bessingers-bar-b-q/2026-09-16T00:00:00Z

A Bessinger family barbecue house at 1602 Savannah Highway in Charleston's West Ashley.

https://nanobotco.github.io/carolina-barbecue/place/big-t-bar-b-q/2026-09-16T00:00:00Z

A Black-owned wood-burning pit on Congaree Road at Gadsden, in lower Richland County below Columbia, run by Larry Brown, known as Teddy and as Big T, who has sold barbecue to the Columbia area for more than thirty…

https://nanobotco.github.io/carolina-barbecue/place/bobbee-os-bbq/2026-09-16T00:00:00Z

A Black-owned barbecue counter on Statesville Road in north Charlotte, opened in 2008 by Bob Steven Roberts after four years working on his sauce.

https://nanobotco.github.io/carolina-barbecue/place/bobbys-bbq/2026-09-16T00:00:00Z

A Texas-leaning smokehouse on North Main Street in Fountain Inn, Greenville County, owned by Octavius Nelson, called Tay, and his wife Sarah.

https://nanobotco.github.io/carolina-barbecue/place/browns-bar-b-que/2026-09-16T00:00:00Z

A farm family's buffet house on the Williamsburg County Highway north of Kingstree, in the Pee Dee, opened in 1981 as a take-out window by Thomas M.

https://nanobotco.github.io/carolina-barbecue/place/bs-barbecue/2026-09-16T00:00:00Z

A whole-hog and chicken pit on the edge of Greenville, Pitt County, in a converted country store on a road the county named for it.

https://nanobotco.github.io/carolina-barbecue/place/bums-restaurant/2026-09-16T00:00:00Z

A wood-fired whole-hog restaurant in downtown Ayden, Pitt County, opened in 1963 by Latham 'Bum' Dennis, of the family that counts Skilton Dennis's 1830 wagon as the start of barbecue for sale here, and run by his son…

https://nanobotco.github.io/carolina-barbecue/place/buxton-hall-barbecue/2026-09-16T00:00:00Z

A whole-hog restaurant that ran from August 2015 to November 22, 2023 in a 1930s roller rink on Banks Avenue in Asheville's South Slope, opened by pitmaster Elliott Moss with Meherwan Irani's Chai Pani restaurant group.

https://nanobotco.github.io/carolina-barbecue/place/cannons-bbq/2026-09-16T00:00:00Z

A small barbecue house in a converted mobile home at a five-way crossroads in Little Mountain, Newberry County — the Dutch Fork, the German-settled land between the Broad and Saluda rivers where the Midlands mustard…

https://nanobotco.github.io/carolina-barbecue/place/carolina-bar-b-que/2026-09-16T00:00:00Z

A mustard-sauce buffet house on South Main Street in New Ellenton, Aiken County, founded by Willie Mae Walker and her son Jess.

https://nanobotco.github.io/carolina-barbecue/place/clyde-coopers/2026-09-16T00:00:00Z

Raleigh's downtown barbecue house since New Year's Day 1938, when Clyde Cooper opened on East Davie Street with fifty dollars borrowed from a brother-in-law; it moved around the corner to 327 South Wilmington Street in…

https://nanobotco.github.io/carolina-barbecue/place/cooks-barbecue/2026-09-16T00:00:00Z

A pork-shoulder pit off Valiant Drive south of Lexington, Davidson County, built by hand in 1969 by Doug Cook on a cul-de-sac plot down the road from his house — a pit and kitchen, a wooden chopping block, a drive-up…

https://nanobotco.github.io/carolina-barbecue/place/coopers-country-store/2026-09-16T00:00:00Z

A whitewashed general store on US 521 near Salters, south of Kingstree in Williamsburg County, that sells hardware, groceries, gasoline, diesel, propane, plow points, cast-iron cookware, live crickets — and, from a…

https://nanobotco.github.io/carolina-barbecue/place/dukes-bar-b-que/2026-09-16T00:00:00Z

The name on a dozen or more buffet houses across the Midlands and Lowcountry, all descended from the sons of Manuel Dukes of Orangeburg County, who learned pit cooking from a Rowesville pitmaster and catered the…

https://nanobotco.github.io/carolina-barbecue/place/fuzzys-bar-b-q/2026-09-16T00:00:00Z

A pork-shoulder house on Highway Street in Madison, Rockingham County, opened in 1954 by T.H. 'Fuzzy' Nelson and in the Nelson family since.

https://nanobotco.github.io/carolina-barbecue/place/gradys-barbecue/2026-09-16T00:00:00Z

A whole-hog pit at a country crossroads in Dudley, Wayne County, south of Goldsboro, opened on July 4, 1986 by Steve and Gerri Grady and run by Gerri and their son Scottie since Steve's death in August 2025.

https://nanobotco.github.io/carolina-barbecue/place/henrys-smokehouse/2026-09-16T00:00:00Z

An Upstate barbecue house at 240 Wade Hampton Boulevard on the edge of downtown Greenville, opened by Beau Hammond — in 1991 by the company's own account, in 1992 by the Greenville Journal's — in a small building that…

https://nanobotco.github.io/carolina-barbecue/place/hites-bar-b-q/2026-09-16T00:00:00Z

A take-out barbecue stand on Dreher Road in West Columbia, open only on Friday and Saturday, where the Hite family has cooked whole hogs and hams over oak and hickory coals since 1957.

https://nanobotco.github.io/carolina-barbecue/place/home-team-bbq/2026-09-16T00:00:00Z

A Charleston barbecue company that began in November 2006 when Aaron Siegel, a Culinary Institute-trained cook from Atlanta, turned Bunch's, a mid-century gas station at 1205 Ashley River Road in West Ashley, into Fiery…

https://nanobotco.github.io/carolina-barbecue/place/hurseys-bar-b-q/2026-09-16T00:00:00Z

The Burlington, Alamance County, barbecue business of the Hursey family: Sylvester and Daisy Hursey began smoking pork over a backyard pit in 1945 with a sauce of their own, moved to a cafe in Gibsonville with two big…

https://nanobotco.github.io/carolina-barbecue/place/jack-cobb-and-son/2026-09-16T00:00:00Z

A Black-owned whole-hog counter on South Main Street in Farmville, Pitt County, that Jack Cobb and his son Rudy built as a cinder-block storefront in 1971 and closed in the autumn of 2018.

https://nanobotco.github.io/carolina-barbecue/place/jackie-hites-bar-b-q/2026-09-16T00:00:00Z

A whole-hog buffet house on East Railroad Avenue in Leesville, across the tracks from the town, that James Lee 'Jackie' Hite opened in May 1979 and ran until his death in September 2016; his family closed it in 2018.

https://nanobotco.github.io/carolina-barbecue/place/keatons-barbecue/2026-09-16T00:00:00Z

A chicken house in the crossroads community of Cleveland, Rowan County, west of Salisbury, where since 1953 the chicken has been fried (or baked) and then dipped whole in a hot vinegar-and-tomato barbecue sauce …

https://nanobotco.github.io/carolina-barbecue/place/kepleys-barbecue/2026-09-16T00:00:00Z

A High Point, Guilford County, barbecue stand in a surplus World War II Quonset hut — a half-cylinder of corrugated steel — opened in June 1948 by Hayden Kepley on North Main Street and closed on February 8, 2025 after…

https://nanobotco.github.io/carolina-barbecue/place/lewis-barbecue/2026-09-16T00:00:00Z

A Central Texas-style barbecue restaurant at 464 North Nassau Street on the upper peninsula of Charleston, opened in June 2016 by John Lewis, a pitmaster from El Paso who cooked in Austin with Franklin Barbecue and then…

https://nanobotco.github.io/carolina-barbecue/place/lexington-barbecue/2026-09-16T00:00:00Z

The pork-shoulder pit on Smokehouse Lane in Lexington, Davidson County, that Wayne Monk opened in 1962 at 26 after working under Warner Stamey, and that he owns with his son Rick.

https://nanobotco.github.io/carolina-barbecue/place/luellas-bar-b-que/2026-09-16T00:00:00Z

An Asheville barbecue house on Merrimon Avenue with a second room at Biltmore Park, opened in 2007 by Jeff Miller and named for his grandmother and his daughter. Jeff and Ashley Miller own it.

https://nanobotco.github.io/carolina-barbecue/place/maurices-piggie-park/2026-09-16T00:00:00Z

A chain of eight barbecue restaurants around Columbia run from the original drive-in at 1600 Charleston Highway, West Columbia, where Maurice Bessinger and his brother Joe Jr. opened in 1953.