Is Durham a Good Barbecue Town?

Here is an irony: North Carolina is considered a good barbecue state, but it has not a single good barbecue city. (Lexington is too small to count.) As a recent post on the BBQ Jew explains, no North Carolina city made the list of the top barbecue cities in a poll conducted by Travel + Leisure magazine. But I did not need a poll to tell me that. I knew already that neither Durham nor Raleigh--nor Greensboro nor Charlotte nor Winston-Salem--is a good barbecue city. To be sure, there are good barbecue restaurants in each city; but not one is a good barbecue city.

What makes for a good barbecue city? For one, there needs to be lots--I mean lots--of barbecue restaurants. Durham, with a population of over 200,000, has, what, eight? The Q-Shack, Bullock's, Dillard's, Hog Heaven, Backyard Barbecue, Ole NC Barbecue, Danny's, and Dickie's, which is a chain restaurant. Am I missing one or two? And only one of them, Bullock's, has a high profile. For a city of Durham's size to be a great barbecue city, I'd say at least two dozen barbecue restaurants are needed. We certainly have that number or more of taquerias. In fact, if Durham is anything, it is a great taqueria town.

For another, a good barbecue city would have two or three barbecue restaurants, each with its devoted fans, that are in an ongoing friendly rivalry with each other. Philadelphia is a good cheese-steak city in large part because of the longstanding rivalry between Pat's and Geno's.

It could be argued that the Triangle is a good barbecue area. The barbecue at Allen and Son in Chapel Hill is as good as I've had anywhere, North Carolina or otherwise. Backyard Barbecue is the best in Durham; in Raleigh, the Pit is my favorite. Those three together make a formidable group. Too bad they are not in a single city.