Barbecue Judging and Barbecue Bets

Or, How I Got the Meat Sweats from a Fish

Apr 27, 2026

Last weekend, fresh off my ham tour of Spain, my barbecue travels took me to Charlotte, North Carolina, where I served as a judge at the 5th Annual Carolina BBQ Festival at Victoria Yards in downtown Charlotte. (When duty calls . . .)

Admittedly, the Carolina BBQ Festival is an exhibition, not a competition (please, no wagering), so the awards were more for fun than for prestige or financial reward (read: cheap plastic trophies.) But I had a good time sampling all of the 22 of the participants’ dishes (when duty calls . . .) while catching up with old friends and meeting some new folks, too.

The award categories included “Best Supporting Side,” “Flavor Bomb,” and “Most Memorable Dish,” but the lead-off category was called “Worth the Meat Sweats,” given for the most impressive piece of protein. Around 2:00 pm, definitely sweaty and a little woozy from the heat, too, my fellow judges and I sat down to tabulate our scores.

It was a tight race in the “Meat Sweats" category. The contenders included two whole hog entries — on a slider from Sweet Lew’s BBQ and in a tray with sweet slaw from Sam Jones BBQ — plus chunks of Gochujang-glazed pork belly from Redwood Smoke Shack and Bryan Furman’s splendid direct-heat cooked ribs finished with a squiggle of mustard sauce, to name just a few. Anthony Dibernardo went over the top with his Certified Angus Beef chuck roll, which he cooked sous vide at 138 degrees for 20 hours then finished on a very impressive “live fire table” from TMG Pits.

CAB chuck roll finishing on the Coal Mine live fire table

But when all the tallies were tallied and sums were summed, the math showed an unexpected winner: Michael Letchworth’s redfish, which was cooked on “the half shell” (that is, with the scales still on), cut into chunks, and topped with a dollop of sesame ginger veggie salad.

Yes, we gave the Worth the Meat Sweats award to a fish dish. It was that delicious.

You might know Letchworth as the partner of Sam Jones in the Sam Jones BBQ restaurants in Winterville and Raleigh, which he still is. Recently though he’s branched out and launched Fox Hollow Outdoors, an online video series and accompanying line of game seasonings. Turns out whole hog isn’t the only thing he knows how to cook.

More BBQ Bets

Long time Cue Sheet readers know I love my barbecue sports bets. Just before I bugged out for Spain, the University of Illinois squared off against the University of Connecticut in the Final Four of the NCAA Men’s Basketball Tournament. Keeping with tradition, the governors of the team’s respective home states made a friendly food-based wager on the game.

If the Fighting Illini lost, Illinois Governor JB Pritzker promised to send Connecticut Governor Ned Lamont an Eli’s Cheesecake from Chicago as well as smoked meats from Murphysboro’s 17th Street BBQ. In return, Lamont wagered . . . I dunno, a bucket of nutmegs or something.1

UConn ended up prevailing 71-62, and, true to his word, Pritzker had Amy Mills of 17th Street BBQ box up a shipment that included racks of ribs, pulled pork, chopped brisket, sauces, and rubs along with a few hats and a copy of one of the restaurant’s cookbooks — “to really give a full flavor of 17th Street,” as Mills put it to WSIL News 3.

It seems all very collegial and sportsman like on the surface, but how much do you want to bet that Pritzker was really trying to lure a few UConn players into the transfer portal and get them to Illinois? Those 17th Street ribs should do the trick.

On the Interwebs

The May issue of Southern Living is out, and it includes my feature on the South’s Next Barbecue Legends. This was a fun one to write. Instead of interviewing the five subjects of the feature (namely, Elliot Moss, Hector Garate, Lewis Donald, Evan LeRoy, and Zach Parker) I talked to some of their peers about what makes each of these cooks and restaurateurs stand out.

If you can get your hands on a copy of the print edition, you should. The fancy layout includes superb photographs from Peter Frank Edwards, Wynn Myers, and Robbie Caponetto — some of the best in the business.

Thanks for reading! This post is public so feel free to share it.

The Passing of an Alabama Barbecue Icon: Don McLemore, the third-generation owner of Big Bob Gibson Bar-B-Q in Decatur, Alabama, passed away on April 17th at the age of 84. The grandson of founder Robert ”Big Bob” Gibson, McLemore took over the family business in 1972.
Family Feud, Part XXII: A while back I reported on the pending arrival of Terry Black’s Barbecue in New Braunfels, Texas, in a location literally across the parking lot from arch-rival Black’s Barbecue, which is owned by Terry’s brother, Kent, and nephew, Barrett. The “Original Blacks,” as Kent and Barrett style their restaurant, isn’t taking this lying down. MySA.com reports that the family has taken over a recently vacated Italian restaurant next door and are adding a new screened-in smokehouse and additional dining room seating.
A Royal Succession: The American Royal announced last week that it is moving to a brand new campus near 118th Street and State Avenue in Kansas City, Kansas, complete with five livestock barns and an exhibition hall totaling 390,000 square feet. This year’s World Series of Barbecue, which is scheduled for September 30 - October 4, will be hosted at the new facility after a decade at the Kansas City Speedway. (The new facility, I will note, is right across the road from the Speedway.)

Burnt Ends

Headline of the Week

From the Tri-City Herald in Kennewick, WA:

I hear they do enjoy a good chopped pork sandwich, but they can’t really hold their liquor.

This is Getting Tiresome

While I was off sampling fine aged Iberico ham in Spain, the Michelin Guide unleashed this digital doozy: “Regional BBQ Styles Across the South: A Complete Barbecue Map.” I thought about discussing this “complete” map as the headline story for this Cue Sheet edition, but I’ve already spouted off more than enough about the Michelin Guide American South, so I decided to demote it to the Burnt Ends section, which is really where it belongs.

The article surveys each state in the American South (or, at least, those states with tourists boards willing to pony up hefty sums to be included), summarizing the distinctive style of each, then blurbing the state’s restaurants that made it into the guide.

I could make doctrinaire quibbles about the commentary. The summary for Alabama, for instance, highlights the state’s mayo-based white sauce but makes no mention of the iconic Alabama-style direct heat cooked ribs found at legendary joints like Archibald’s in Northport and Dreamland in Tuscaloosa.

Of course, the Michelin inspectors didn’t see fit to include those rib joints nor the birthplace of Alabama white sauce, Big Bob Gibson’s, in the guide, so they don’t appear in the article. The only Alabama restaurant to make the cut was Huntsville newcomer Salt Smokehouse, which opened in June 2024 and features fusiony items like smoked edamame and brisket bao sliders. Michelin’s blurb highlights “a fatty slice of prime-grade smoked brisket cooked overnight" that “cuts like custard and doesn’t need a lick of sauce.” (Really? Like custard?)

On to Florida. “Southern barbecue remains appreciated from Miami to Orlando,” the author asserts, and provides these examples of the state’s unique style: the jalapeño-cheddar sausage at Smokemade Meats + Eats, which “gives Texas a run for its money,” the “brisket, sliced thin, black pepper-rubbed” at the Polite Pig in Orlando, and the “melting, charred slices of brisket” at Hometown BBQ in Miami. (Melting and charred?)

I do have to question the author’s grasp on American geography. “Historically,” we are informed, “Georgia’s location has allowed it to be a culinary bridge between the Carolinas and states farther South.” (Hang on. Let me count the states south of Georgia . . . ) Apparently what bridges the whole hog of the Carolinas with Florida’s legendary smoked brisket is Korean barbecue, for the two Georgia restaurants highlighted are Han II Kwan, a straight-up grill-at-the-table Korean barbecue restaurant, and Heirloom Market, which serves a really tasty American-Korean barbecue fusion but isn’t particularly representative of the Georgia barbecue tradition. (They do have Brunswick stew as a side, though.)

I could go on. I think I will. The lone representative Mississippi joint? Sacred Ground, “an impressive salute to Texas-style barbecue.” South Carolina? Lewis Barbecue, “Welcome to Texas by way of the Lowcountry”. (At least they included Rodney Scott’s whole hog alongside it.) Tennessee? “Today, other regional influences from states like Texas are creating new barbecue traditions,” we learn. The only representative is Shotgun Willie’s BBQ in suburban Nashville, where “Texas-style barbecue chicken and pulled pork hold court alongside American wagyu brisket with peppery bark and smoky-savory jalapeño sausage oozing with cheese.”

OK. You get it the point. The Michelin Guide, like so many other publications these days, way over-indexes on Texas and shows little appreciation for the South’s many other distinctive regional styles. That’s all fine and good, I suppose. If that’s the kind of barbecue the famed Michelin inspectors like, then that’s what they like.

But I do wish the guide’s editors wouldn’t label such a limpid effort a “complete map” of regional barbecue styles. They could also stand to do a little fact checking and avoid publishing statements like these:

At Sam Jones BBQ in Raleigh, “three generations of the same family have been perfecting their ‘cue.” No, three generations of the Jones family have been running Skylight Inn in Ayden, but only the third generation (the eponymous Sam Jones) operates the Sam Jones BBQ in Winterville and the newer outpost in Raleigh.
At Sam Jones BBQ guests can “chase” their barbecue “with one of their beers on tap, brewed by the family in nearby Winterville.” The last I checked, the Jones family does not own a brewery in Winterville, which is 85 miles from Raleigh. In fact, Sam’s decision to sell beer at his Winterville location caused quite a spat with his teetotaling Baptist preacher father, as Sam describes in his book Whole Hog BBQ.
In South Carolina, the yellow mustard-based sauce “trac[es] back to German settlers in the 1700s.” No, it doesn’t. Please stop repeating that.
“From Austin, Texas, Pitmaster Bill Durney brings his signature barbecue to Magic City with Hometown Barbecue.” Durney is, quite famously, from Brooklyn, New York, not Texas, and he brought his signature style down from his original restaurant in Red Hook.

One might expect such slipshod stuff from click-bait outfits like Lawn Starter and The Travel (former home to that content-cranking machine, Katie Machado). But this is the Michelin Guide, a publication that describes itself in press releases as “recognized globally for excellence and quality” and “a reliable companion for any traveler seeking an unforgettable meal.”

Unlike so many other media outlets these days, the Guide should be able to afford a fact-checker, since the publication has managed to establish new and seemingly lucrative revenue streams — namely, signing up state tourism agencies to underwrite their regional guides to the tune of millions of dollars per year. ($4.95 million for a three year contract for the American South guide, $2.7 million for Texas, and over $3 million for five years in Florida.)

Here in South Carolina, our share of the Michelin bill is a cool $350,000 per year. Speaking on behalf of my fellow taxpayers, we would like a refund.