Fork It Over The Intrepid Adventures of a Professional Eater-Mantesh by Unknown (rm book recommendations .TXT) 📕

Nell’s parking lot. I started back north on Route 17, then performed another feat of daredevil driving when I noticed a Cheerwine soda dispenser on the far side of the four-lane, gleaming like a Cape Hatteras lighthouse, just outside a tire store. Cheerwine is pretty much the sweetest soft drink ever made, and in my opinion the greatest accompaniment to barbecue ever produced, although nowhere I ate on this trip offered it. I ripped the car into a U-turn, tore into the parking area, and had an ice-cold, twelve-ounce can that tasted just right, a little like Dr Pepper with cherry syrup stirred in. Except for a Moon Pie, I can’t think of another food that provides so much pleasure for forty cents.

I had three stops scheduled for my final day. The first place let me down, considering how perfect it looked. Smoke was pouring from an open pit when I arrived at Murray’s, a white-pained cinder-block building in a rapidly gentrifying suburb of Raleigh. Yet the pork was oddly bland, tasting of little except vinegar.

Stephenson’s, which lists its address as Willow Springs but isn’t even in the same county as Willow Springs, wasn’t promising at all. It was way too fancified. The tables were varnished pine, and mine was situated next to a glass wall overlooking a little garden of flowering trees and bushes. I couldn’t figure out why I felt so uneasy, until I realized I had never been in a barbecue place with landscaping before. The shrub-bery was excellent, and much to my surprise, so was the sandwich. The coleslaw was magnificently ingenious, a challenge to the slaw made by Pete Jones. Some wild-eyed innovator in the kitchen had added a few bits of finely chopped pickle, just enough to give the slaw extra piquancy and a pleasing crunch.

Grady’s was even harder to find than Stephenson’s. Allegedly in Dud-ley, it was five miles from the town center at the intersection of two F O R K I T O V E R

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roads not found on any map I had in my car, and I had three of them.

There was nothing near it but open fields and a tractor. Grady’s had seating for about twenty-five, a cooler filled with soft drinks, some frilly curtains, and a gum machine. The pork was so delicious I found myself contemplating the possibility that it was even better than the Skylight Inn’s, although the coleslaw wasn’t in the same league. I wanted to ask the woman stirring a pot how she made such a wonderful sandwich, but she let me know she was too busy to talk and I should find her husband, who had all the time I needed.

Stephen Grady told me he had opened in 1986, back when he was employed at a sawmill and could get all the wood he needed for free.

At the time, his wife, Gerri, had been laid off and needed work. “I bought it to make her a job,” he said, smiling, “and does she ever have a job.” He’s sixty-five now, and he and Gerri expect to work for five more years.

That will be the end, he said, because nobody will want to undertake the costly upgrades the state demands of a new proprietor. A long-term owner is allowed to ignore many newfangled regulations, and so can a relative who takes over a family business, but none of Grady’s eight children from a first marriage had shown interest in barbecue, and his wife’s children weren’t lining up, either. “You got to work hard at this,” he said. “This is not one of those easy livings.” Worried that the end was near for wood-cooked North Carolina barbecue, I reached a supervisor in the state’s environmental-health services.

Bart Campbell, one of those much-feared regulators I’d heard about, insisted the state wasn’t trying to put anybody out of business. It just didn’t want walls covered with soot, cinder blocks soaked with grease, and flies coming through unscreened windows. He didn’t sound unreasonable. “We don’t want people cooking on bedsprings they put across the top of their pit,” he said. “We’re trying to keep people away from things they can’t clean.”

He assured me that the state of North Carolina still stood behind wood-cooked barbecue, which was the right thing to say. Without barbecue there would be no reason for citizens to attend church suppers 2 2 4

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or gather at political rallies, both fundamental to the well-being of any southern state. “Life without good barbecue would be bad,” Campbell said.

I returned home to the land of toll roads, satisfied. I had eaten too much of the best barbecue I’d ever tasted, and I felt reasonably confident that wood cooking would endure, provided future generations of barbecue owners didn’t resent having to run hot-water pipes out to their pits.

I had eaten a dozen or so sandwiches during my four days on the road. While some people might think that was too many, all I know is that the morning after my return, I woke up realizing I had a long day ahead of me and not a single sandwich to help me get through it.

GQ, november 2000

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H E R E A N Y M O R E

This is a story about the celebrity chefs you adore: Wolfgang, Emeril, Rocco, Alice, Todd, and Mario.

It has a flaw, however, and I wish to acknowledge the fact immediately, lest you think I’m trying to get away with something. This is not the equivalent of one of those sneaky magazine profiles where the movie star refuses to give an interview and the writer hides the truth as long as he can.

Here is my confession: Although I am writing about celebrity chefs, the ones beloved by TV audiences and foodies nationwide, no actual celebrity chefs will