Running on Full: The North Carolina Historic Barbecue Trail

If we could drop a dime in the jukebox on this pig at the Bar-B-Q Center, we would select Louis Armstrong’s “Struttin’ With Some Barbecue. ”PHOTOGRAPH BY JOHNNY AUTRY

Original article published by: Our State Magazine

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Lexington is to me what 5th Avenue is to the fashionista, what Cooperstown is to the baseball buff. My two boys are with me on this leg of the trek, and we stop at the Bar-B-Q Center on North Main Street, which is on the Historic Trail.

We sit in a booth big enough to accommodate the Walton family. Behind us is a life-size pig statue decorated with a jukebox and 45s. The decor is splashed with ads for Lexington’s Barbecue Festival: the 26th annual, the 27th annual, the 28th annual, the 29th …

The chopped red pork is presented in a small cardboard tray, melded with slaw so red that both ’cue and cabbage appear as one. What especially endears me is the small silver cup of heated sauce that comes with the meal, in case I need some extra zip. My 8-year-old orders his first barbecue tray, making his old man beam with joy. Secretly, I hope he doesn’t finish it all; he doesn’t, and I gladly fulfill my role as a human garbage disposal.

I could stay here for a week, eating barbecue three times a day. But the mountains are beckoning with the promise of more barbecue.