a place · NCAllen & Son Barbeque

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. Allen split the hickory himself, fired the pit every half hour for nine hours, and dressed the chopped shoulder with the hot vinegar sauce he had from his father — an eastern sauce on Piedmont meat. His wife Tammy waited tables for thirty years and made the ice cream; the pies, cobblers and banana pudding were the second reason to come. A separate Allen & Son in Pittsboro, under a licensing agreement, stayed open.

Keith Allen's father James ran an Allen & Son in Chatham County, and Keith was cooking at twelve or thirteen after his father bought the business; his father died at 51 or 52. In 1971 Keith opened the Chapel Hill restaurant with $3,000, Our State reported in 2017. He started work at 2:30 in the morning five days a week, split hickory logs by hand for the heat and the flavor — 'I keep cooking with wood because I'm chasing that flavor' — and cooked sixteen-pound shoulders down to nine or eleven over nine hours. 'Nobody's hands but mine touch my barbecue, until the customer's do.' The authors of Holy Smoke interviewed him at length; the Southern Foodways Alliance gave him its Guardian of the Tradition award in 2007. He had no son to take it on; his daughter went to graduate school in geospatial science. In early December 2018 he closed without notice, and Chapelboro reported on December 6 that the Pittsboro Allen & Son on U.S. 15-501 would continue under a separate licensing agreement. UNC Press published a closing interview with him two weeks later.

Sixteen-pound shoulders over hickory Allen split himself, the pit fired every thirty minutes for nine hours, the meat chopped and dressed with a vinegar sauce he called hot and spicy. Chicken, catfish and cheeseburgers filled out the menu, and the desserts — ice cream made daily, cobblers from his grandmother's recipe, coconut chess and peanut butter pies, pecan pie, banana pudding — were made in the house, with sweet tea.

Closed since December 2018. The building at 6203 Millhouse Road, Chapel Hill, is not the Pittsboro Allen & Son, which continued separately; this record is the Chapel Hill restaurant only.