Roadfood_ Revised Edition - Jane Stern [72]
The hush puppies are curious: elongated crescents with a wickedly brittle, sandy-textured crust. The slaw is strange, too, if you are expecting anything like typical coleslaw. This is barbecue slaw, meaning finely chopped cabbage bound together with—what else?—barbecue sauce! It’s got a brilliant flavor and a pearly-red color that handsomely complements your pork of choice. The small tray, by the way, is only about three by five inches and an inch-and-a-half deep, but it is astounding how much meat and slaw get packed into it.
Bridges’s dining room is plain and soothing, with the kind of meditative atmosphere unique to the finest pork parlors of the mid-South. Square wooden chandeliers cast soft light over green-upholstered booths and a short counter up front where single diners chat quietly among themselves as they sip buttermilk or iced tea and fork into barbecue. During our first meal here, five police officers with gleaming automatics in their patent leather holsters occupied a table toward the back. Even they spoke in hushed tones, as if it would be sacrilegious to be raucous in this upstanding eat-place.
Brownie-Lu
919 N. Second Ave.
919–663–3913
Siler City, NC
BLD | $
Brownie-Lu chicken is Broasted, meaning that it is cooked in Broaster equipment, a unique combination of frying and pressure-cooking that goes back to the mid-1950s. The result is chicken that is shockingly tender, so gentle that it tends to slide off the bone of its own accord, encased in crunchy-brittle skin so thin you can practically see through it. The meat has a full but mellow flavor, like something an ideal grandma might make. It is served with nice rolls and such laudable side dishes as butter beans cooked with ham and genuine mashed potatoes. In fact, there are enough good vegetables on the menu that a health-food type could come here and have a totally meatless, delicious meal. A full breakfast is served—country ham is a must—and lunch and supper demand a slice from one of the kitchen’s homemade cream pies.
Bum’s
115 E. Third St.
252–746–6880
Ayden, NC
BL | $
Many people think of Bum’s as a barbecue restaurant, and that in itself is a high compliment considering its “competition” in Ayden is the Skylight Inn (North Carolina), which any sane person must agree is one of the best barbecue restaurants anywhere in the state. Some others think of it as a chicken restaurant. You’ll wait a good twenty minutes for the bird to fry, but the reward for your patience is crisp-crusted chicken on a par with North Carolina’s finest. We relish the barbecue and the chicken, but we love Bum’s most for its vegetables and side dishes.
It’s small torture to go through the cafeteria line and have to choose among corn sticks and corn bread, luxuriously porky boiled cabbage, pieces of crisp pork skin, butter beans, and collard greens. The last, those greens, are actually grown by proprietor Latham “Bum” Dennis in his home garden, and they are cooked to a point of supreme tenderness and savor at the restaurant. There are a few desserts from which to choose; banana pudding is the one not to be missed.
Bum’s breakfast buffet features excellent biscuits (with or without gravy) and a choice of pig meats that includes homemade sausage, pork tenderloin, and fried ham.
Bunn’s Bar-B-Q
127 N. King St.
252–794–2274
Windsor, NC
L | $
Bunn’s building started life in the mid-1800s as a doctor’s office. It became a filling station in 1900, and in 1938 barbecue was added to the menu of gasoline and motor oil. There’s still an old Texaco