6203 Millhouse Rd.
(Google Maps is a little off, though: it’s really at the corner of Millhouse/Mt. Sinai and Highway 86.)
Chapel Hill, NC
(919) 942-7576

Hours: Sometimes variable — call ahead. Closes before dinner Monday through Thursday; usually closed for a break during the winter holidays.

The Nutshell

The best eastern North Carolina-style BBQ you’ll ever eat, smoky, tender, and flavorful. Great traditional accompaniments like hushpuppies and sweet tea.

The Place

You might recall Allen & Son from the Los Angeles Times profile of owner and pit-master Keith Allen back in 2007. This venerable destination has been a North Carolina fixture for decades, so it made a fitting final stop on our Triangle BBQ itinerary. The homey dining room sits by itself near some railroad tracks outside of Chapel Hill. Inside, they have checkered tablecloths, a motley assortment of folding metal chairs and old wooden ones, and lots of reviews and memorabilia on the walls. If you walk around out back, you can see the well-worn cinderblock smoking pits.

The Meat

Especially after our excellent meal at The Barbecue Joint, we had high expectations for Allen & Son. We weren’t disappointed: Keith Allen’s product remains the best North Carolina-style ‘cue we’ve ever had. It was full of pork flavor, with a nice balance between tender inside pork and tasty outside brown. You can order the BBQ on a platter or in a sandwich, which comes on a soft (and quickly soggy) hamburger bun with a basic but satisfying slaw on top of the meat.

(Judd says: I for one arrived at Allen & Son expecting to be disappointed, if only because of the obscenely long build up and high expectations. Then, as we were leaving The Cue Joint, Andrew proclaimed that he wasn’t sure Allen & Son would be substantially better. Anyway, all this is to say, I think of it as an even greater achievement that Allen & Son knocked our socks off. I agree with everything Andrew said, and I’d add that the texture was perfect. With long-smoked pork it’s easy for the meat to get mushy, lose its integrity, even if it still tastes good. Allen & Son was right on the edge, but didn’t go too far. I also liked that it wasn’t too uniform — there were larger pieces of pork that hadn’t been completely shredded. Tasty bites!)

Why is Allen & Son’s BBQ so good? Well, fewer and fewer pit-masters do what Keith Allen still does: chop hickory wood and slow-smoke pork shoulders starting in the wee hours of the morning. Many popular places have moved to quicker, cheaper methods like pre-cooking the meat and then popping it in the smoker for just a short time or using electric smokers that mete out smoke from processed chips. These modern techniques sometimes produce good ‘cue, but they never produce the transcendent pork that Allen & Son serves.

The Sides

The hushpuppies are excellent: crunchy, coarse cornmeal batter fried up crispy. The slaw is wet and a little creamy — I’m partial to a drier slaw — but it is well-seasoned and ultimately successful. Since the basic sides are so good, I never seem to get around to trying the others, but their menu seems less extensive than The Barbecue Joint’s. Dessert is another Allen & Son claim to fame, but I’ve never had enough room left for it after a BBQ meal there. Keith Allen makes many of the desserts himself while the meat is smoking.

In the End

Allen & Son is a mandatory stop on any North Carolina BBQ itinerary. You will be hard-pressed to find better pulled pork anywhere — it is that good. I hear you can phone in an order to have it shipped to you overnight if you must have your fix but you can’t make it to Chapel Hill. It just might be worth it.

630 Weaver Dairy Rd.
Chapel Hill, NC
(919) 932-7904

The Nutshell

BBQ with a gourmet twist. Good but not great pulled pork, delicious sides, delectable desserts.

The Details

The Barbecue Joint in Chapel Hill was the second BBQ stop in our recent field trip to my home state. We sneaked out of lunch at the conference we were attending (the nominal reason for this BBQ junket) with a mix of native North Carolinians and curious Californian friends to sample the fare at this unassuming spot in a strip mall on Weaver Dairy Road. (Amusingly, the place is right next a Curves fitness center. The owner told us that the Curves used to be a Weight Watchers until the frustrated members, tempted by the smell of BBQ wafting over, decided to move their franchise elsewhere.)

The first thing we noticed about the ‘Cue Joint was a decidedly unorthodox menu. Of course they serve the usual pulled pork platters and sandwiches, but they also include such non-pork delicacies as duck confit and sweet potato bread pudding with whiskey sauce. Hey, no problem there — I’m all for gourmet touches as long as the BBQ is up to snuff.

We sat in the sun on the patio and sipped sweet tea (a delicious clue that they hadn’t strayed too far from Carolina orthodoxy) while we waited for our meat to arrive. We weren’t disappointed: the pork was tender and juicy, with a nice pink smoke ring testifying to its time in the smoker. The sauce was typical eastern North Carolina vinegar-based. My only complaint about the ‘cue was that it lacked the full complement of smoky goodness — there were no visible “outside brown” bits, the chewy pieces from the outside of the shoulder that pack much of the flavor.

As for the sides, the baked beans were spectacular, sweet and spicy with hefty chunks of ham. The slaw was light and crunchy, a perfect complement to BBQ. The thick-cut fried green tomatoes had a tasty cornmeal crust fried up right and crispy, a substantial improvement on the adequate but unremarkable version at Mama Dip’s. And in a subtle but inspired touch, the BBQ entrees came with a few apparently homemade sweet pickled cucumber slices. Usually I’m a dill pickle partisan, but these pickles made me reconsider my stance. They were crisp and lightly sweet, not soggy and cloying like store-bought sweet pickle rounds.

Just as we finished our meal, the owner came out with three desserts on the house: the sweet potato bread pudding with whiskey sauce we’d been eyeing earlier, a slice of key lime pie, and some banana pudding. (We hadn’t even dropped the bbq.isgoodfor.us name yet, so chalk it up to genuine hospitality!) The key lime pie was well-executed but perhaps the least notable of the three. The banana pudding hit the spot; it’s a North Carolina classic with chunks of banana and vanilla wafer cookies. The real superstar, though, was the bread pudding and its delightful interplay of caramelized sweet potato goodness with whiskey fire. We passed around all three plates, but the bread pudding drew the most longing stares as it made the journey around the table. (Will there be one more bite for me?)

Add the Barbecue Joint to the list of must-eats in Chapel Hill. It’s not quite the same genre as old stalwarts such as Allen and Son’s, but there’s room for both under the BBQ big tent.

The bbq.isgoodfor.us crew is on a field trip to North Carolina. For our first culinary stop, Tamar, Andrew, and I head for lunch is Mama Dip’s Country Kitchen in Chapel Hill. This restaurant is a classic for southern country cooking, and while it’s not strictly a BBQ joint, they do make BBQ, and we tried it, so we’ll review it here.

We started off with a quick hit of fried green tomatoes. We all thought they were good, but not as crispy as they could’ve been. The corn meal batter had a nice flavor, though they served the dish with a side of ranch which overpowered everything else.

For lunch, Tamar and Andrew both had fried chicken, which is the real rock star of this Chapel Hill institution. Tamar chose white meat, which was quite tender and juicy, not overdone at all the way a lot of white meat fried chicken is. Andrew’s dark meat (also my favorite) was amazing, with a perfect, dark brown, nutty, crisp crust. (Andrew says: The fried chicken at Mama Dip’s is indeed nearly perfect — but I would add that I’ve made my own fried chicken with the recipe in one of the restaurant’s cookbooks, Mama Dip’s Kitchen, and the simple coating in that recipe of flour, salt, and pepper does not fry up nearly as hefty or crunchy as what they now serve at the restaurant.)

The sides were impressive too. I had a side of fried okra, which was tasty, though I was a little confused about how each of the crispy nuggets got to be exactly the same size. Andrew and I both tried the greens, which were the tastiest I’ve ever had, nicely seasoned with little bits of pork. Tamar tried the yams, which were the disappointment of the bunch, mushy and overly sweet. Andrew had black eyed peas which were also not great, mushy, but at the same time grainy / chalky the way beans can get.

I ordered the chopped pork plate, and was reminded that just because NC is a hotspot for BBQ, not every worthwhile restaurant around here makes good BBQ. The pork was the consistency of sloppy joe, looking like it had been stewed in a steam tray for quite a while. There were no brown bits, no texture to the meat, no smoke, and little flavor. Pouring on extra sauce, which seemed to be a hybrid with vinegar and quite a bit of mustard, helped the dish quite a bit.

Still, we all agreed, if you’re in Chapel Hill go to Mama Dip’s, enjoy the classic southern dishes. Drink a gallon of sweet tea and feel the sugar buzz. Order the fried chicken. Avoid the BBQ.

Tip o’ the smokebox to BBQ aficionado and fellow North Carolinian Joseph!

What can I say? We take our BBQ seriously in North Carolina. We’ve had a link to the excellent Lexington Collection web site in our Hot Links section (on the right, below the categories) for a while now, but today I noticed they have a page of Dennis’ most quotable BBQ moments.

Here, he addresses one of my pet peeves:

“Y’all is plural, there is no such thing as one grit and barbecue — for the thousandth time — is a noun. It is not a verb or an adjective. You cook a pig and you get barbecue. You grill steaks and burgers. You do not ‘barbecue’ anything. So shut up about it.”
    (D. Rogers, The News & Observer, April 22, 1977)

Only annoying part: The “Southerners as a curiosity” tone of the writing, a common feature of articles about the South in the NYT and LAT. (The WaPo gets a pass because they seem aware that, in fact, they ARE in the South.) Notice the way they comment on the accent, complete with phonetic spelling.