That was my first thought when it was proposed that we fly across the state of North Carolina in search of the best barbecue. And when I say “no one cares,” I don’t mean that pork-eating carnivores don’t care about who has the best barbecue—oh, they do—but BBQ aficionados don’t care about what I think is the best barbecue.
We needed an expert.
BBQ Destinations
Jim Auchmutey
Of course, Senior Photographer David Tulis knew a guy. Jim Auchmutey and Tulis were former newspapermen at The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, and while Tulis came to AOPA when the paper reduced staff, Auchmutey took early retirement and pursued his passion—barbecue. He’s co-authored two cookbooks, The South: The Beautiful Cookbook and The Ultimate Barbecue Sauce Cookbook; written a collection of stories about the South in True South; and written the seminal book on barbecue, Smokelore: A Short History of Barbecue in America. He’s a James Beard Foundation award-winning writer and has appeared on The History Channel’s series The Food That Built America and Netflix’s American Barbecue Showdown. A native Georgian, he comes from a long line of barbecue pitmasters.
“The story of barbecue touches almost every aspect of our history,” says Auchmutey. “It involves the age of discovery, the Colonial era, slavery, the Civil War, the settling of the West, the coming of immigrants, the great migration of Blacks and Whites from the South, the rise of the automobile, the expansion of suburbia, the rejiggering of gender roles. It encompasses every region and demographic group. It is entwined with our politics and tangled up with our race relations. Barbecue is America in a mouthful.”
He’d do.
What we didn’t realize was that in addition to sharing his knowledge of all things barbecue we would have to endure, er, I mean, listen to, Tulis and him tell tales about the world of journalism in the 1990s and their shared passion for 1970s bands and their concerts. Oh, Southern men and storytelling.
But that’s another story.
First stop Raleigh (TTA)
I chose the Aviator Brewing Company outside Raleigh, North Carolina, as the first stop on our tour. Tulis piloted a Cessna 182 from AOPA’s headquarters in Frederick, Maryland, while I flew commercial because, with Tulis, Auchmutey, videographer Bri Cabassa, and all their gear (Auchmutey brought his books), only three of our merry band were getting to fly. I needed to be the chase car, getting us to the other remote and obscure barbecue joints Auchmutey had identified (all relatively near charming small airports) and the hotels we’d be staying in across the state (see map above).
Aviator Brewing Co. is located south of Raleigh in a small town named Fuquay-Varina. Fuquay was once a mineral springs destination for those seeking to “take the cure,” and Varina was named for the wife of Jefferson Davis, the Confederacy’s president during the Civil War. The two towns merged in the 1960s. It’s a cute little place with wide streets, but what’s truly remarkable is how pilot Mike Doble, who started Aviator Brewing Co. in 2008, has taken over the town. He has a tap room and restaurant, smokehouse barbecue restaurant, pizzeria and beer shop, and opening this year, a five-acre brewery with a Douglas C–54 Skymaster as its bar.
I knew of Doble from the late Mike Collins, an AOPA technical editor who was a beer aficionado and wrote about Doble (“Pilots: North Carolina Craft Brewer,” December 2015 AOPA Pilot). Doble also provided beer to an AOPA Fly-In at Beaufort, North Carolina. So, I knew he fit some of our basic criteria—a pilot who owned a barbecue restaurant. But how would Auchmutey rate the food?
After a tour of all his holdings and a peek at the new brewery, Doble took us behind the scenes at his barbecue restaurant, Aviator Smokehouse. There we sampled brisket right out of the smoker.
“What’s interesting is that this place represents sort of a new style of barbecue. This is not a traditional North Carolina barbecue place,” said Auchmutey. “Number one, they do brisket. And there are a lot of people in North Carolina who will tell you brisket doesn’t belong here. Brisket’s something that ought to be in Kansas City or Texas. But the way barbecue is now, people want to have everything everywhere. People are curious; they are curious about different meats and different styles of barbecue. And the people at Aviator Smokehouse do a wide variety of meat, not just the North Carolina pork.”
Had I steered us wrong on the first stop?
“They do it well,” he said. “It was delicious. Highly recommend.”
Whew.
On to Mount Olive (W40)
Now we were on our way to Auchmutey’s picks—places he’s written about and recommends for the “true” taste of North Carolina barbecue. Tulis flew our tasters southeast to Mount Olive Municipal Airport (W40). It was Auchmutey’s introduction to GA flying, on board what Tulis has dubbed “Air Dave.”
Tulis is recorded by our videographer: “All right, so Jim, we’re in the air, on Air Dave now. You got your life in my hands in this Skylane. We’re going to Mount Olive, a little bit to the east. We’re not going there for its famous pickles; where are we going?”
Tulis chattered away on the intercom, not waiting for answers, detailing for the new passenger his flight path and scanning for traffic. He decides to circle the airfield, looking for the pickle water tower.
“I’m just checking the airport environment out a little bit. Always a good idea,” he tells his passenger.
“Sorry, Jim, I’m coming down faster than I should be,” he says as he heads for the runway.
“Got it. Perfect. Nice. If I don’t say so myself. Hope we got this on video for a change,” he says of his landing.
“For what it’s worth, you did not scare me,” deadpans Auchmutey.
First flight accomplished, I drive us to the nearby town of Dudley to a spot it’s clear Auchmutey is fond of. Spelled Grady’s but pronounced Gratties, it’s on the side of a lonely road in a concrete block building. The cars and trucks out front attest to a busy lunch service. It’s not fancy, and the menus are handwritten; we’ve come on a day when the special is chicken pastry. I know it’s not barbecue, but it reminds me of my grandmother’s slippery pot pie, and I must have it. Auchmutey gives me the first of what will end up being many side eyes as I break barbecue customs across North Carolina.
“Grady’s has been around since 1986. It’s one of the classic whole hog barbecue places in eastern North Carolina that demonstrates the whole-hog style, which is actually the original barbecue style in America,” he says. “The eastern part of North Carolina is really known for doing whole hog barbecue. Grady’s is run by Steve and Gerri Grady who are both getting up there in age; I think the son, Scott, is starting to take it over. It is a small mom and pop place. And for people who love this style of barbecue, it is beloved.”
Auchmutey stares lovingly at his plate describing how the barbecue is made by mixing pork from different parts of the pig with a spicy vinegar sauce. Then he moves on to the coleslaw and then the hushpuppies. “These oblong deep dried hushpuppies are omnipresent in eastern North Carolina barbecue. It’s chopped pork, coleslaw, the hushpuppies, that’s eastern North Carolina barbecue. This is the trifecta—and I’m having sweet tea.”
Cross-country to Lexington (EXX)
Here’s where flying always beats driving. We are crisscrossing the state to the western portion because of how we want to end the trip the next day, so the biggest push is from Mount Olive to Lexington—the “BBQ capital of North Carolina.” I’m in the car for hours, and when I arrive at Fly High Lexington, the FBO at Davidson County Airport (EXX), the barbecue gang is in high spirits. I’m beat. But the fantastic FBO service provided by Stephanie at the desk would buoy even the crankiest of guests. She’s a perfect representative for her city, pulling out all the literature available about the barbecue capital, encouraging us to visit many places, cautioning us about our hotel choice, and pointing us to a winery owned by NASCAR team owner Richard Childress. We change hotels to be near the winery, but sadly, it is closed for the day by the time we get there. No worries; there will be places for a drink at the barbecue joints, right? Yet again Auchmutey side eyes me when I want a glass of wine with the next plate of barbecue. Nope. Sweet tea or lemonade it is.
Lexington takes its barbecue seriously. There are more than 20 barbecue restaurants in the area; they have a barbecue festival every October; there are pig statues throughout the town; and they call themselves Pig City. We start at Lexington Barbecue. Auchmutey has reached nirvana.
“Lexington Barbecue is probably the most famous barbecue restaurant in the Piedmont Region of North Carolina, representative of what they call the Western North Carolina style. It is a shrine. It’s been here since the 1960s,” he says. “It is packed, including the sheriff’s deputies; you know if the local deputies are here, it’s going to be pretty good.”
Once again, I’m on Auchmutey’s bad side because I order a cheeseburger and fries. I find the look of this western barbecue off-putting. This is no longer whole-hog territory but pork shoulder, and it and the coleslaw are ground so fine that they appear to blend together in a white sauce tinged with red, which is ketchup he says.
“The people in the east think that this little bit of red ketchup in the barbecue sauce is somehow sacrilegious, but the people here can’t understand why you wouldn’t have it. This is good stuff, and they’ve been doing it a long time.”
Pik-n-Pig Carthage (BQ1)
We arrive in Carthage, North Carolina, at the spot that inspired our barbecue hop idea. It’s a barbecue restaurant on an airfield, which is known as BQ1, and it’s busy with aircraft flying in for lunch almost every day it’s open, Thursday through Sunday, 11 a.m. until 4 p.m. It had a devastating fire in 2021, and it has been on our to-do list since it reopened in February 2023. So beloved in the community, this restaurant was rebuilt in part from donations of nearly $30,000 from the rural community.
The cause of the fire is not known but it destroyed the entire restaurant, and, with COVID-19, it took quite a long time to rebuild. Tiffany and Ashley Sheppard and his mother Janie are the proprietors. Their background in barbecue goes back to the family starting in the 1970s. They came to Carthage in 2006 and started selling barbecue by the side of the road and then were introduced to airfield owner Roland Gilliam (the official name of the airfield is Gilliam-McConnell Airfield). Gilliam tells me he put in the strip for his own use, but the restaurant drew others to land here. It’s a challenging 2,500-foot-long asphalt runway among stands of trees at each end and has a parallel grass strip.
“Even though I’d grown up three miles down the main road here from this place, I’d never turned up into the airport. We came over here and topped that hill, and as soon as we got to the top I said, ‘that’s it,’” says Ashley. “You could tell it was a barbecue restaurant, and it was rebuilt after a complete and total loss to the fire. The whole building burned down, but it’s built to resemble what was here before.”
Sheppard is not a pilot but appreciates his clientele; many of the decorations throughout the restaurant pay homage to pilots as well as the all-mighty pig. It’s a very welcoming place, and those not flying in enjoy watching the airplanes. Those who do fly in often grab and go.
“The majority of our business is local customers, people who drive in. But everybody comes because of the airplanes. And they come for the barbecue,” he says.
The pork butt is cooked overnight in a smokehouse, manned by loyal pit man Travis Baker. He’s up all night manning the smoker and leaves for home and much deserved sleep when the restaurant opens at 11. The restaurant also serves brisket and smoked chicken. We had amazing fried pickles, and Auchmutey smiled through most of the meal. Except when I ordered the fried chicken.
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