LTH, be my travel agent to DC again

Many years ago, when the world was young, I posted an account of my driving vacation to the DC area. Comments on it, and references to it in regards to favorites like Full Kee and Ben's Chili Bowl, still suggest that it is of use to people as they visit those places anew.

But I don't want to go to those places again.

So who can help me fill in some slots on the itinerary? As JeffB knows, I'll drag my family anywhere if it's near the route (as defined by me, very generously). So this will not be wasted effort; if at all possible, I will go where you say.

Here's the gist of the nub of the itinerary:

Day 1: Leave in the afternoon, stop somewhere between Toledo and Cleveland, hopefully. Dinner suggestion needed (not Byblos).
Day 2: Breakfast suggestion in above area wouldn't be out of place, though kids have tendency to LOVE the idea of the free buffet at the motel. Will drive to Morgantown, WV. Lunch suggestion en route (not Primanti's in Pittsburgh) welcomed.
Day 3-4: Morgantown. We're going to Fallingwater one of those days. Anything around there for lunch?
Day 4 or 5: drive to DC area (Alexandria). Anything for breakfast or lunch en route?
Day 6-10ish: DC area. Would love a great little crabshack type place, anywhere in region (ie could be as far as Chesapeake Bay, Baltimore, etc.), that's not totally touristified. Not Ben's, Five Guys, Florida Ave., Full Kee. (Well, might take new dish suggestions for the last.)
Day 7-11ish: go to Richmond. Lunch suggestion en route, anything else in Richmond area.
Day 10ish: I will take off early one day and hit some N. Carolina BBQ joints. I have my ideas of which the ones I have to hit are, but I'm eager to hear affirmations/alternatives if you've been there.
Day 12ish: Might drive back a different way that could include Charleston, Columbus (though I know it well enough), Indy. Or do Cleveland again, but probably be there at a different time, so more suggestions anywhere on 80 in Ohio welcome.

This is your chance to pull one totally out of... obscurity. I'm eager to hear what you have.


I'd make this bigger, but Flickr has made it too mysterious how.

The last few who have sought recs for DC haven't gotten to the one that always tops my list, so there's no feedback, but I know you'll heed this advice Mike



Ethiopian. Do not miss under any circumstances. Biggest Ethiopian population in the U.S. is in DC, and having the food there was a revelation to me. The Chicago standbys aren't in the same league. We had a killer meal at Queen Makeda, which is a very downscale joint where the fellows hang out and drink coffee downstairs. Don't miss the kitfo, but everything we had was wonderful. Another favorite of the folks I know is Etete across the street, which is a significantly more refined experience. Which makes me think QM is more up your alley Please hit one of these places... or some Ethiopian place in DC... so I can have some backup on this and can stop facepalming every time somebody comes back from DC and says they didn't get around to Ethiopian.



I don't know if Chinese is something you want to get on this trip, but if it's of any interest at all, Grace Garden is the place to go. They're in Odenton, which is about midway between DC and Baltimore (favoring Baltimore). I wrote about them here, and a couple of others chimed in as well. Some of their dishes are absolutely phenomenal, and hole-in-the-wall joints don't get much more hole-in-the-wall than this.



A very interesting option is a place called Present, which bills itself as "Imperial Vietnamese Cuisine." There were some hits and some misses, but it is, indeed, a far cry from any Vietnamese I'd had before. Despite the airs, it's still a fairly casual to midrange strip mall joint. Certainly not a huge production. I wrote about it here

Haven't been, but all of my Baltimore friends rave about Honey Pig Korean BBQ, which has a couple of locations around DC. I think they're especially pork-focused. Surprise.

I'm not much help for crabshacks down near DC, but if you decide to trek up to Baltimore (a great side trip, I think), my favorite, though it isn't waterside, is Mr. Bill's Terrace Inn. Faidley's is also a must-hit. There are better crabcakes to be found, but not much, and the place itself along with the accompanying public market is a true experience. Often overlooked at Faidley's is a killer fried haddock sandwich (I add slaw and hot sauce). If you go that route, I can detail a few more stops up in that neck of the woods.

If you are in Richmond, I would head 30 miles south to Petersburg, VA.

Blandford Church and its Tiffany windows is one of the most interesting memorials to the Civil War days.

http://www.petersburg-va.org/tourism/blandford.htm


And when you are in the neighborhood, drive down West Washington past a few dozen abandoned tobacco warehouses to Little Pig BBQ. It is a small BBQ stand with a few picnic tables outside. They smoke pork shoulders and are known for their mustard based sauce. The lady who built the stand in the 1932 was a customer of my cafeteria and her picture is still at the stand.

I normally don't post links to Tripadvisor reviews but this one provides a accurate and excellent history of the stand:

http://www.tripadvisor.com/ShowUserRevi ... ginia.html


Rawlings Little Pig Barbecue
3329 West Washington Street
Petersburg, VA 23803-2745
(804) 861-4046


If you are looking for a "sit down" place, head to King's BBQ.

King's Barbecue
2910 South Crater Road,
Petersburg, VA 23805
(804) 732-0975

The place was founded in 1945 and is the most popular place in town.

http://www.kingsfamousbarbecue.com/


When you are in the region, you shoudl look at a stop at the Greenbriar Resort in White Sulphur Springs, WV.

Dmnkly wrote:The last few who have sought recs for DC haven't gotten to the one that always tops my list, so there's no feedback, but I know you'll heed this advice Mike



Ethiopian. Do not miss under any circumstances. Biggest Ethiopian population in the U.S. is in DC, and having the food there was a revelation to me. The Chicago standbys aren't in the same league. We had a killer meal at Queen Makeda, which is a very downscale joint where the fellows hang out and drink coffee downstairs. Don't miss the kitfo, but everything we had was wonderful. Another favorite of the folks I know is Etete across the street, which is a significantly more refined experience. Which makes me think QM is more up your alley Please hit one of these places... or some Ethiopian place in DC... so I can have some backup on this and can stop facepalming every time somebody comes back from DC and says they didn't get around to Ethiopian.

You're not the only one. Maybe we need to start a support group. I took a quick look, and I've posted about D.C. Ethiopian eight times. MikeG can easily read what I've written, as recently as earlier this year, so I won't repeat myself. It's been 2.5 years since I lived in D.C., and I still regularly crave D.C. Ethiopian.

Something that I've also posted about, but to a lesser extent, is Eden Center in Northern Virginia. I think that it would be a great time with kids, stopping at a few of the banh mi shops, followed by a sit-down meal at Huong Viet. I think that the restaurants in Eden Center are on average much better than what we have on Argyle. If you wander inside the mall, you can easily find restaurants with an almost exclusively Vietnamese clientele. Eden Center may be my all-time favorite strip mall.

Another thing I think would be fun with kids is the huge Korean buffet at Heebeen on the Little River Turnpike in Northern Virginia. The food isn't the best Korean ever, but it's a meat, panchan, mediocre sushi throwdown. I think it's a load of fun and we went several times. We always went for weekend lunch, so I can't comment on what the buffet looks like during the week. There may be something similar in Chicago, but I haven't experienced it.

We were at Fallingwater just a few weeks back. There isn't much around there, so plan ahead if you want to eat nearby. We didn't plan ahead, and ended up on a road with nothing but fast food and didn't eat until we were back near Pittsburgh. One quick nonfood tip - - Don't miss Kentuck Knob, another Wright house near Fallingwater.

If you make it to Baltimore and want to walk around a neighborhood that's a bit quieter than the main harbor or Fell's Point, I've found Canton to be charming, and Mama's on the Half Shell worth a stop, but more for atmosphere than outstanding food.

And, lastly, while I'm not usually running to tourist-centric spots, I've liked the Chesapeake Bay touristy Maryland blue crab places I've visited, such as Cantler's. While not cheap, they tend to have decent food and good views. I've been to one hole-in-the-wall crab shack, and I missed the atmosphere. Is there a reason, Mike, that you'd like to avoid anything "touristified"?

Safe travels,

Ronna

http://www.qdrest.com/

Above is a link to the Quarterdeck in Arlington, VA. Eat your pile of blue crab outside on the terrace.

And now for something completely different: this is NOT an Asian hole-in-the-wall, it is a reasonably authentic Bavarian resto, architecturally correct, well-known, and, if you're in the mood for something ironically LTH, a pretty decent place to have dinner. South of DC, north of Charlottesville. I've eaten there (I'm proud to say), and enjoyed it, like, totally.

Just to widen the spectrum of your choices, Mike!


Geo

http://www.thebavarianchef.com/

Hi,

If you find yourself travelling on I-64 northwest of Richmond, then stop at Tamarack "The Best of West Virginia."

While you can see lots of West Virginia art showcased there, I go for the food court that features West Virginia food products. Easy to bypass the pizza and hamburgers to shoot for the good stuff from the lunch menu:

SALADS
Pickled Beets and Egg
Aun Ida's Creamy Cole Slaw
Backyard Potato Salad
Sweet and Sour Slaw Relish

SANDWICHES
Fried Green Tomatoes
with Bacon and Swiss Cheese
Fried Catfish
Hickory Smoked Pork BBQ

SIDE DISHES
Jake's Chili
Fried Green Tomatoes
Beans and Ham
Braised Greens

ENTRÉE
Pan Fried West Virginia
Rainbow Trout
Chicken Pot Pie
with Herbed Crust

DESSERTS
Greenbrier Peach
with Whipped Cream
Bread Pudding
with Cinnamon Sauce

When I was last there, I asked for extra whipped cream for my peach dessert. The gal pulled on a large pastry tube with fresh whipped cream and piped it on my plate.

They had students from a culinary school working the cafeteria when we were last there. For the price and location, it was very good food.

I wish I had more reasons to drive by there. When we had a customer in Roanoke, Virginia, we would time our trip to allow at least one meal at Tamarack.

Regards,

http://www.crisfieldseafoodrestaurant.com/


Crisfield in Silver Springs... old school, simple..but incredibly fresh East Coast Seafood (stuffed flounder, crab cakes, crab/shrimp Norfolk)....no tourists....

Dmnkly wrote:Faidley's is also a must-hit. There are better crabcakes to be found, but not much, and the place itself along with the accompanying public market is a true experience. Often overlooked at Faidley's is a killer fried haddock sandwich (I add slaw and hot sauce).

Yes! Faidley's is in the top tier of my eating memories. Certainly the best crabcakes this inlander has ever had. I only had a quick run-through of Lexington Market as they were closing but I'm dying to get back for a complete tour. That's the haddock sandwich in the middle of the table. I believe the little guy is looking longingly at a coddie (cod cake, really tasty).



This reminds me I need to post about my Baltimore visit of a year and a half ago. Was only there a few hours but had some great eats—Faidley's. Chaps, Grace Garden—thanks to Dmnkly.

Thanks for all the responses so far (keep 'em coming!) I will respond to a few things:

Dmnkly and others who suggested Ethiopian: YES! And glad to have more specific recommendations. I wished I had gone for Ethiopian back then over Florida Ave. Grill (no better than many here, and decidedly less friendly) but this time will be better anyway because the kids will eat it, having done so a few times in Chicago.

Baltimore is likely; my sister works there. Guess I gotta go to Faidley's, finally. My thing about the non-touristy remote crabshack place (to RAB's question among others) is just that I know there are plenty of those great big mobbed-every-night crab joints named Ye Captain Cracky's around the area, and I'm just looking for, for purely romantic reasons, the Calumet Fisheries rather than the Bob Chinn's, the Taylor Cafe rather than the Salt Lick. Which is not to say that we may not try one (I saw good things about Cantler's at Road Food) somewhere, just that I was hoping to stir some less well known spots to the top, too.

Thanks JLawrence, the kids are interested in the Civil War too now and so your history-and-BBQ field trip suggestion is an excellent one.

But the whole thread is full of great suggestions, thanks and keep it up!

Hi,

I was at the Florida Avenue Grill last year. The neighborhood had changed and seemed considerably more upscale than 10 or 20 years ago. I often integrated the diner as well as the neighborhood when I visited in the past.

To mix a bit of Chicago culture to it: the Chads and Trixies were at Florida AVenue Grill who seemed to regard the place as a regular hang out. The weedy lot next door had new construction. The menu was streamlined for a faster Sunday morning service.

Gone are the days when my sitting at a table to eat in was surprising to a staff member's seven year old daughter. "People like you never eat here. You always do take out."

While it may seem like any other grill today. It was a more unique place to visit not too many years ago.

Regards,

Mike G wrote:Baltimore is likely; my sister works there. Guess I gotta go to Faidley's, finally. My thing about the non-touristy remote crabshack place (to RAB's question among others) is just that I know there are plenty of those great big mobbed-every-night crab joints named Ye Captain Cracky's around the area, and I'm just looking for, for purely romantic reasons, the Calumet Fisheries rather than the Bob Chinn's, the Taylor Cafe rather than the Salt Lick. Which is not to say that we may not try one (I saw good things about Cantler's at Road Food) somewhere, just that I was hoping to stir some less well known spots to the top, too.

I hesitate to bring it up because I didn't get there myself, but Sue Island Dock Bar was the big discovery right when I skipped town. But I promise you won't be the least bit disappointed by Mr. Bill's. They're busy, but they're far enough away from the harbor that it isn't a ton of tourists. Very much still a local joint despite developing a higher profile over the past 4-5 years. Just screams Baltimore to me.

When I think really, really touristy joints, I think Phillips and Obrycki's, neither of which are places I expect you'd ever find yourself (with good reason).

Other Baltimore stops, since a visit seems likely:



Attman's is the best surviving member of Baltimore's Corned Beef Row, and it's a real gem. I know you're a far more discerning and experienced pastrami consumer than I am, so I'd be curious to hear what you think if you get there. Any of the sandwiches involving corned beef or pastrami are the way to go, and you can pretty much skip everything else, though I love their chopped liver. The place is really outstanding, and again, all Baltimore.



I'm on record as being less than fully enthusiastic about pit beef, but I think I'm in the minority there and it's another Baltimore food. Tough cut of beef, charred over a fire, rare in the middle, sliced thin on a roll with any of a number of toppings. Arby's is the bastardized and mass marketed version of this. It wasn't my personal favorite, but Chaps is probably the way to go.



Cute neighborhood, wonderful people, but the food in Baltimore's Little Italy is, with only a couple of exceptions, really terrible. In particular, do not get roped into Vaccaro's, which is a beloved city institution and a really, really mediocre Italian pastry shop. Just a couple of blocks away is Piedigrotta, which is spectacular, and I died a little death every day seeing the crowds at Vaccaro's while Piedigrotta sat quietly just a two minute walk away. The big story here is that Carminantonio Iannacone has a very credible claim as the inventor of tiramisu (his bakery in the Veneto was a well-documented supplier of the restaurant where tiramisu first appeared). But there are tons of great Italian sweets here, not of the over-the-top Pasticceria Natalina variety, just exceptionally good versions of the basics. A sandwich at Attman's and a five minute walk down to Piedigrotta for dessert is a perfect lunch. I mean, it's great Italian pastry. You can get that at a number of places, so it's not like it's a must or anything. But it's a great place if you're looking for dessert in the area. Only requirement is that you have to tell Bruna and Carminantonio that Dominic, Jennifer and Matteo miss them dearly.

Thanks to all for the suggestions above, and as promised, we made good use of them and hit several excellent restaurants based on your suggestions, better than I likely would have found on my own. The following covers most of what we ate in DC itself, though I'll have at least two other posts on other parts of the trip.



One thing for which I certainly needed little convincing was that I should finally try Ethiopian food in D.C. Five years ago I'd walked past the Ethiopian restaurant row on Utah going between my first lunch at Florida Avenue Grill and a second one at Ben's Chili Bowl, but it wasn't the right time for it-- it's not something easily ordered solo, but my kids wouldn't have tolerated it then. Since then, though, they've eaten Ethiopian in Chicago-- they dig ripping up the injera bread and eating it, or sometimes, making things out of it, as Cousin Olivia did:



So one morning we did the Natural History Museum on the mall (not as good as the Field, but it has two ace attractions, the Hope Diamond and an Easter Island head) and then headed up for Ethiopian at Dom's suggestion of Queen Makeda.



We were directed immediately to a kind of salon on the first floor where, this being Washington, C-Span hearings on gulf shrimp droned in the background. That aside, the service was tremendously warm and welcoming, and the food was, indeed, the best and brightest Ethiopian food I've had. I wouldn't say it altered my perceptions of things, since most of it simply tasted like really good Indian food, bright curries, except for the doro wat in the middle, which was more like a Mexican mole in its dark richness and complexity. But it was a terrific meal, and has encouraged me to give African (one of my own dark continents when it comes to ethnic cuisines) more of a try.

Queen Makeda
1917 9th St
Washington, DC 20001
(202) 232-5665

Afterwards, we went to the Smithsonian American Art Museum. This has a nice collection of American folk art, Elvis icons, religious art made of tin cans, etc., but amidst it all there is one magnificent work that jumps out at you like a deer on a highway:



The wall tag refers a bit condescendingly to the amateurish perspective. Well, amateurish in the same way that all pre-Renaissance Italian painting is, say. But that only adds to the intensity of this portrait, which throbs with a kind of neurotic energy in every brushstroke. It's called Stag at Echo Rock, and it instantly became one of my favorite American paintings— and no one knows who painted it, nor has any other work by the same hand apparently been identified.

There was also a special show of Norman Rockwell paintings, from the collections of a Mr. Lucas and a Mr. Spielberg, and I finally got to answer a question I've always wondered about. In Rockwell's painting of the man standing in front of the Jackson Pollock-type drip painting, did he do a Pollock-type drip painting himself— or did he fake it, carefully outlining and filling in each blob? The answer is, he dripped the Pollock (you can see the three-dimensional drippings), and painted the Rockwell part (masked off before or after the dripping was done).



On the way back we spotted a gelato place. Not just any gelato place, but NPR-approved gelato!Pitango gelato makes organic free-range cruelty-free gelato, or some such, there were various magazine articles and such on the walls about the farms the stuff comes from. All I really cared, though, was that the flavors were very fresh and very tasty (oh, and cold and wet, which matters in DC in August). I had mojito with flecks of mint, and I think white grapefruit with it, and it was first-rate.

Pitango
413 7th Street, NW
Washington, DC 20004



Speaking of curry-like things, another place we tried was an Afghan kabob joint in Crystal City (Arlington), Kabob Palace. By sheer dumb luck, we happened to arrive five minutes before the sun went down on a night in Ramadan, so we got tables (there were nine of us) before it filled up and got to partake of the various Ramadan freebies being set out as we waited for our food.


These guys know which side an Afghan restaurant whose delivery area includes the Pentagon's naan is buttered on.



We got all kinds of kabobs, goat chops, etc. as well as some vegetable sides, and all of it was of very high quality, fresh spices and well-grilled. We stuffed nine people for less than $50. No wonder this place is as busy as an Afghan bazaar (once the sun goes down). There are actually two places of this name in the same block, I think the other one is a slightly nicer, more upscale version, but the action is at the brightly-lit, 24-hour one we went to.



Kabob Palace
2315 S Eads St
Arlington, VA 22202
http://www.kabobpalaceusa.com



Finally, several people mentioned Eden Center, a mostly Vietnamese strip mall in Falls Church. By myself, I might have eaten my way down one side and across the other, but with a party of nine, I settled on Huong Viet based on the recommendations for dishes I could find online— and except for one caramelized fish dish which weirded my sister and brother-in-law out, overall it was a fine meal, as good as any Vietnamese meal I've had here; a tamarind soup with canteloupe and other sweet notes in it was especially fine and novel to me. We wandered a few of the shops afterwards but they were all closing up kind of early; we just had time to freak the kids out a little with durian candy and the likes, and to buy them chocolate pockys to keep them sugared up.

Huong Viet
6785 Wilson Blvd
Falls Church, VA 22044
(703) 538-7110

So I would call it a successful venture into the mostly ethnic side of the DC area. Posts about Baltimore, crabs, country ham and North Carolina barbecue to follow.

Having lived there for five years, I would say you captured the DC "experience" pretty well. Although you missed out on some terrible Mexican food.

Looking at the thread above, I note that the "several people" who named Eden Center are pretty much all named REB. (Guess I thought several because of what I read elsewhere for specific dishes.) So thanks for that, sorry to have overlooked you the first time.

Really pleased to hear that you and the progeny enjoyed Queen Makeda... anxiously awaiting news of the Baltimore portion of the trip.

Well, rather than prolong suspense only to deliver a dud... I'll deliver the dud right now.

We had one day in Baltimore. Plan was, take the kids to the aquarium, afterwards wife would feed them at something kid-friendly in aquarium area (I believe they went to Potbelly), I would hike over to the Lexington Market to try Faidley's.



Faidley's, here I come. Oh boy, this is going to be good. But wait, it's strangely quiet at the fried foods counter...



All the rest of Faidley's, raw bar and seafood counter and so on, is operational. But the part why someone would come there during August which is, you might notice, a prominent tourism month... it's closed. Without a word on the website, which I had visited the night before.

Thanks a lot, Faidley's.


Avoid.

The rest of the market doesn't look that great but I decide, hell, I have to eat something. I get a crab cake from another stand, foreboding hanging over me. If I knew my crabcakes, if I loved crabcakes, I could rail against the pathetic thing I was given in artful literary fashion. Let's just say, it tasted like a ball of Stove Top Stuffing, deep-fried.

I found another stand and ordered another one, just to complete my humiliation. It was all right, actually. It actually had crab in it, for one thing.



Given more time, I could have done better than this, I'm sure, but I had to meet up with the family again, so this was all I could do, and hope for gelato or something to wash away the taste of betrayal. I'll use your excellent tips on some other occasion, I'm sure; for now, all I could do was think wistfully of everything I wasn't eating in Baltimore.

* * *



I also had dreams of a day spent toodling around the Maryland countryside. The reality proved to be racing across it as fast as we could to spend a day at Rehoboth Beach, where most food seems to come in $15 tubs. (Grotto pizza isn't bad at all NY-style; the much-heralded French fries taste exactly like Five Guys.) So my ideal of the little, rickety crab shack in the middle of nowhere eluded me. We did manage to visit picturesque, just-interesting-enough-for-half-a-day Annapolis and hit the popular, by no means small and untouristed, but still reasonably authentic and reliable Cantler's:







This still seems a stranger way to eat than we experienced at Queen Makeda's, and by the end of it I had a long gash in my thumb full of Old Bay Seasoning, but I guess once a decade, this is fun and reasonably tasty.

Cantler's Riverside Inn
458 Forest Beach Road
Annapolis, MD 21409-5912
(410) 757-1467

Bummer :-/

Mike,

Too late now, but you couldn't have done much better than the raw bar at Faidleys. TLD and I had lunch there three days in a row last month, and began each day with raw oysters and clams. Both came from Virginia...James River cherrystones and Chincoteague oysters that were ice cold, f'ing huge and really tasty. "R" month old wives tale be damned!
(Last visit, two July's ago - the oysters were Louisiana! These were just as tasty.)

Sorry to say this, but we both had the jumbo lump cake three consecutive lunches.

And it must be a regional thing...because even ok steamed crabs coated with Old Bay take me so far back...that I feel like I've died and gone to heaven. The cuts on your fingers and lips with the burning of the Old Bay...just the cost of doing business. It ain't any fun unless you've also got crab juices running down your chin and arms.

Evil

Evil Ronnie wrote:And it must be a regional thing...because even ok steamed crabs coated with Old Bay take me so far back...that I feel like I've died and gone to heaven. The cuts on your fingers and lips with the burning of the Old Bay...just the cost of doing business. It ain't any fun unless you've also got crab juices running down your chin and arms.

Amen. I miss them already ready and it's only going to get worse.

Evil Ronnie wrote: It ain't any fun unless you've also got crab juices running down your chin and arms.

Amen.

In the very early 70s I did my officer basic training at Aberdeen Proving Ground, on the Bay north of Balto. There were half a dozen bars/crab shacks that catered to the Proving Ground, with a goodly amount of tables inside, and, best of all, a group of tables outside, under roofs. Between each table was a huge 50-gal galvanized trash can. You'd bring your platoon (or whatever), get 'em seated, and then platters of crabs and pitchers of beer would appear, as if by magic. Crack the crab, eat the crab, throw the debris in the trash can. By the end of a Friday evening, not only would your chin and arms be swimming in crab juice, your fatigues would be sopped as well. And your men didn't march very well by then either. Of course, neither did you or your sargeant....

Man, those were G O O D times, swilling beer and crab.

Geo

I've read an entire book on North Carolina barbecue and I still have trouble keeping track of which part likes ketchup in their sauce and which doesn't, and which part is whole hog and which shoulder, and what the hell the damned Piedmont is. This site tries to explain it for me:

The big difference between eastern barbecue and western - or Lexington-style, as it's sometimes called - barbecue is that ketchup is commonly added to the sauce of western barbecue. The other difference is that in the east they use the whole hog, both white and dark meat, while in the west they cook only the pork shoulder, which is dark meat and thus more fatty, moister and richer.

All that said, though, the truth, says me, is that - contrary to the mythical status of this east-west "rivalry" - most casual barbecue eaters probably wouldn't even notice the difference between eastern and western North Carolina barbecue if you put one of each before them.

Certainly, if you compare the two styles against the whole panoply of American barbecue styles there's far more similarity than difference. The unadorned chopped pork meat is distinctly different from, say, Memphis chopped pork covered in goopy red sauce and slaw, let alone from brisket in Texas or ribs in Kansas City.

Anyway, we were in Richmond for a few days, which was just close enough to North Carolina for a totally insane person such as myself to drive for eight hours down to North Carolina, across the center of North Carolina for three or four lunches, and back up to Richmond with lots of leftovers for the rest of the family to share. Seriously, I drove more for lunch(es) that day than we drove getting from Chicago to West Virginia. But when else was I going to get to North Carolina? I'd gotten this far in life without ever going there, and there seemed little enough reason to expect that to change otherwise.

With the help of the North Carolina BBQ Trail I plotted out a number of candidates and took off. The first one I knew I wanted to hit was Allen & Son near Chapel Hill:



Looks like a great old barbecue place, doesn't it? (That was it at the top, too.) I wouldn't know, though, since it was closed for two days for no particular reason. I'd been Faidley'd again! Given that Aaron Deacon had roughly the same experience, I think we have to regard the allegedly great Allen & Son as having passed into an unreliable phase of its existence where you'd best have a backup at the ready.

Allen & Son Pit Cooked Bar-B-Q
203 Millhouse Road
Chapel Hill, NC 27516-8101
(919) 942-7576 (calling first strongly recommended)

Which I did; another 15 minutes of driving brought me to this place:



A&M Grill in Mebane looked and felt less like a barbecue spot than it did any old family restaurant in the South. But don't let the comfortably padded, honey-voiced waitress who greets you fool you; a glance in the kitchen revealed serious barbecue equipment:



I ordered sliced pork, per the BBQ Trail's guidance, then felt regret as I contemplated the probable result, gray CAT-scan-slices on my plate. Still, I was cheered by the first thing that arrived at my table, a freshly-fried platter of the best frickin' hush puppies I'd ever eaten in my life. Okay, I was hungry enough that if I'd eaten the napkin it would have gotten two Michelin stars, but still, I ate four places' hush puppies on this trip and these were easily the champs, light and yet complexly spiced. Really great.



My plate came, bearing something large and brown on it— a bun? Damn, I'd meant to order a plate of meat, not a sandwich...



No, it wasn't a bun. It was an enormous sweet potato, fresh from the oven, what I'd imagined would be a little scoop of orange mash but was, instead, practically a meal in itself. While the "sliced" pork was what anyone else would call pulled, nice long strings of supple, lightly but definitely smoked pork flesh, moderately doused with a ketchupy, heat-laced mop of sauce and accompanied by a peppery slaw. A&M Grill doesn't normally make the top tier of Carolina barbecue places (the trail site was the only place I'd seen it mentioned), and I grant I was hungry enough at that point to love anything that came on a plate, but this was first-rate in every way, the waitstaff and my fellow diners were friendly (when my sweet potato came a weatherbeaten old boy smiled at me, minus a couple of teeth, and said he wished he'd ordered that), it's clean and bright, I absolutely recommend it as a backup to Allen & Sons... or on its own.

A&M Grill
401 E Center St
Mebane, NC 27302
(919) 563-3721



The next stop, Hursey's, was another 20 minutes away in Burlington, which was the main thing that recommended it.  The three smokestacks set the atmosphere— except for one thing: no smoke coming out of them.



Not a good sign, and between that and the somewhat overly clean and professional look of the place, I decided not to spend too much time here and get my order from the only marginally friendly to-go counter.



Chopped is a legitimate style for North Carolina barbecue but this was chopped so finely it was practically liquefied; it was chopped to the kind of no-teeth-necessary consistency one associates with other Depression era foods when people couldn't afford dentistry as the Maid-Rite sandwich or Russell's BBQ in the Chicago area. That said, with some of the (perfectly standard) cole slaw and some sauce on it, this wasn't a bad sandwich, really (and they did have the best fries of the day). It's just that with smoke apparently existing only in this place's memory, it isn't barbecue in any sense I'm willing to recognize. This place seems to have been yuppified out of its roots, and isn't worth the travel for the barbecue tourist.

Hursey's
1834 S Church St
Burlington, NC 27215
(336) 226-1694
hurseysbarbecue.com/



Thankfully, you could spot the smoke easily at my fourth and final stop. Despite my geographical confusion, I'm pretty sure that the Lexington Barbecue in Lexington is an example of the "Lexington style" referenced above— though the only sauce I saw was a vinegary red dip as clear as raspberry Kool-Aid, without a trace of ketchup gooeyness to it.

As I came around the side to see where the smoke was coming from, I found a window into the kitchen and a cook hard at work chopping the meat. When I asked permission to snap a picture, he invited me inside for a closer look:



Lexington cooks only shoulders, round as hams, with cardboard flaps over the meat to keep the smoke in and ash that flies up from falling down on the meat. The firebox was roaring away just a foot or two to the right:



Lexington gives you a wide variety of ways to order your meat— coarse chop, medium coarse, with brown (outer skin), etc., and what makes this possible is that the shoulders are disassembled and neatly organized in the kitchen:





When I was finished snapping pictures he asked, "You gonna have somethin' to eat?" When I said yes, he escorted me through the kitchen to a side door which put me straight into the dining room. I ordered a plate of coarse:



Not that I needed much to eat at this point, but the meat was tender and full of flavor— though still not that smoky, even though this had been the smokiest place I'd visited all day. The cole slaw was way too strong, almost like eating cocktail sauce; only that night, when I put it on a sandwich, did it really work as the condiment, rather than a side dish, it is. The people couldn't have been nicer and so I ended my day by ordering some more food to fill out my assortment of leftovers (have the peach cobbler), and took off for Richmond. I couldn't wait till dinner in about 3 hours, and another chance to eat barbecue.

Lexington Barbecue
10 US Hwy 29 70 S
Lexington, NC 27295
(336) 249-9814

* * *

Barbecue was not the only pork-related adventure I wanted to have in this part of the world, however. If North Carolina was for barbecue, Virginia was for ham lovers in my book. I imagined seeing hand-scrawled signs for country ham by the side of the road, and kept my eye out for same, but I didn't spot any, at least not in the middle of the state— maybe in a seriously ham-oriented area like Surry County, but not up Richmond way.



I did find one place online that was on the way back to D.C., however: Calhoun's Country Hams. It was in Culpeper— where I have a couple of friends at the Library of Congress' new film preservation center— and ironically enough it's the one ham producer who comes to the Alexandria farmer's market, just blocks from my sister's house where we'd be staying. But it worked for us to visit him in his natural element, and I was glad I did— the sight of these beautiful hams hanging on a plywood wall was worth the drive alone:



Mr. Calhoun, as you might suspect from someone selling in the city, aims for a more natural-tasting, less salty product than many old time producers, and even uses refrigeration during part of the curing process to allow him to get away with the minimum salt necessary. (This is no blasphemy; prosciutto producers have always done the same, beginning the curing process in winter to take advantage of the cold.) Besides the hams, there was a variety of other bits and pieces sitting, cured and unrefrigerated, on display. I picked up some fatback, of which more anon.



I had dreams of talking my way into a tour of the smokehouse, or curing rooms, or something. Unfortunately by the time we got there it was straight up noon, and a lunchtime crowd ordering sandwiches made it impossible to schmooze my way into special treatment. So we bought our ham— the young woman stressed the price (around $55) to make sure I knew what I was getting into— and in the meantime ordered sandwiches to eat in the car. As we waited, a man getting his lunch struck up a conversation with me about country ham, how to cook it, etc. He seemed even more excited for me to be getting a Calhoun ham than I was.



We had our sandwiches in the car; the meat was milder than others I've had but it had the full flavor of true country ham, and it's hanging proudly in my basement right now, awaiting an occasion for soaking and cooking soon.



There's just one thing I'm still left wondering about. I bought the fatback, which looked very much like the bacon I make. And I started to fry some up last Sunday morning. But I could tell as it fried, it was going to be very, very salty. Too much so, in fact, for any of us to eat with pleasure. So what is this fatback for, exactly? It would have to go into something, where it would add salt to the dish and lose some of its own, I guess. Has anyone used this kind of true country fatback, extra salty, and what did you use it for?

Calhoun's Country Hams
219 South East Street
Culpeper, VA 22701
540-825-8319
http://www.calhounhams.com

Good stuff Mike. Let us know what you do with that ham.

Mike, great post. Re fatback: greens, beans.

So do I want to soak it first? Or do I figure I use just enough of the fatback to add the proper salt to a big bowl of greens. like one slice for a big bowl, diced? Because it's pretty much in ultramega-salt power form right now.

When cooking a big pot of greens, for example, a nice chunk of fatback can provide all the salt in what is (1) a very salty dish made of (2) stuff (the greens) that can take a lot of salt. Pre-soaking a la bacalao isn't something I've seen done. Then again, anything I know about Southern cooking came from people who didn't soak the country ham, either.

I was in Alexandria today, and the Mrs and I stopped at Brabo. We had the charcuterie platter, which they offer as a small or large item. The wife had a tart with mozzarella, prosciutto, and basil, which is essentially a very crispy pizza in my eyes. It was very good, and was paired with a Bavik Belgium pilsner (I got to enjoy that). We also split the mussels prepared in garlic, white wine, shallots, and parsley. The also offer the mussels with chorizo and fennel. We were quite pleased, and though we were not there for happy hour, which offers the menu at a lower price point, we were happy we stumbled upon the place, just a few blocks away from the farmers market.

Brabo by Robert Weidmaier
1600 King Street
Alexandria, VA
http://www.braborestaurant.com/old-town-alexandria-dining.php?sec_id=4

Tomorrow, we are going in search of crab, and I have to get out of the resort area we are in to find some. I was locally recommended to Quarterdeck in Arlington, and as I am without a car, I am unable to venture too far. I hope to report back, but have heard good things so far. Mike, warn me if you can if I am on the wrong track.

Quarterdeck Restaurant
1200 Fort Myer Drive
Arlington, VA 22209

http://www.qdrest.com/

I don't know it personally, but I've heard it recommended, so sure, give it a shot.