North Carolina has a new BBQ Hall of Fame. These are the first inductees

Drew Jackson
·3 min read

There’s a new hall of fame honoring North Carolina’s signature food: slowly smoked pork cooked directly over glowing wood coals — better known as Carolina-style barbecue.

The new North Carolina Barbecue Hall of Fame inducted its inaugural class this month, celebrating some of the innovators and originators who helped make North Carolina one of America’s premier barbecue regions.

This new hall of fame unites the two styles of North Carolina barbecue, erasing the hard-line distinction between eastern whole hog style and Piedmont/Lexington style and highlighting masters of each.

There are nine inductees into the first class of the North Carolina Barbecue Hall of Fame, representing seven legendary restaurants. The honorees include:

An induction ceremony was held on March 1 at the Alliance Convention Center in Burlington.

Barbecue’s national profile has soared in recent years, sending a once humble style of cooking to the heights of the culinary world. North Carolina has played a role in that, as decades-old restaurants and a new generation of pitmasters have helped spread the gospel of smoked pork.

The hall of fame intends to honor the past while barbecue continues to evolve, said organizer Chuck Hursey, whose grandfather Charles Hursey was among the inductees.

“There’s never been an official North Carolina Barbecue Hall of Fame, but it’s what we’re known for all over the world and all over the nation,” Hursey said. “If you mention North Carolina, the first thing people think of is barbecue.”

Several North Carolina barbecue practitioners have been inducted into the national Barbecue Hall of Fame, while Lexington has a “Wall of Fame” honoring important Piedmont pitmasters.

Hursey said the hall of fame plans to celebrate what’s special about Carolina barbecue.

“Sometimes (east and west) gets pitted against each other, but they’re all ambassadors for North Carolina,” Hursey said. “We wanted to try and start off and cover the whole state, focusing on the oldest ones still in business. These are the people who originally set the reputation of North Carolina barbecue.”

Most decorated pitmasters

The inaugural class of pitmasters includes some of the most decorated and celebrated restaurants in North Carolina, led by the Jones family. Today, Sam Jones, a fourth-generation pitmaster and the youngest person inducted into the North Carolina Barbecue Hall of Fame, is among the country’s top whole hog experts.

“It’s important to honor the old guard of this tradition,” Jones said in a news release. “I’ve been blessed to have been able to travel all over this country as somewhat of an ambassador of North Carolina barbecue, which previously was looked down upon in the culinary community. It was not until Southern cuisine was elevated to fine dining that barbecue rose to being recognized as something special. The old guard had been working hard all these years with almost no recognition. I wish the people who came before me, like my grandfather Pete and his uncle, the man who taught him to cook barbecue, could have accepted this award instead of me.”

Hursey said organizers plan to grow the hall of fame annually and that a physical space is in the works.

As North Carolina’s barbecue landscape evolves and menus sometimes take on a Texas influence, Hursey said he couldn’t rule out brisket pitmasters one day being honored in the hall of fame with a special distinction or category.

“We’d have to consider it, but it may take us a while to cover all the older folks first,” Hursey said. “We really wanted to honor the families and people who helped establish North Carolina barbecue. Over the years they’ve put millions of dollars into the North Carolina economy. It doesn’t matter who you are, everyone can sit down at the same table and have barbecue and have a conversation.”

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