The trip to Statesville was uneventful, straight up I-77 until we reached US 21 (we like to travel on secondary roads as much as possible). We circled the area where the restaurant was several times before finally finding it:
The late CBS correspondent (and NC native) Charles Kuralt has eaten here, as have various other celebrities, photographs of whom can be seen on one of the walls near the door. The restaurant features a lunch counter and a dining room.
Here's a menu:
That's my shy Sara's hand holding up the menu. Give her a hand, folks.
We both ordered chopped pork plates; here's mine:
The pork was properly moist and tender, smokier than we have encountered it elsewhere; quite good. Two types of sauce are on hand, both Lexington-style tomato-based sauce and Eastern-NC-style vinegar-based sauce. I had the Lexington-style sauce and Sara had the Eastern style. French fries and corn on the cob were both good sides. The hush puppies were sweet and good, hand-formed into golf-ball-sized spheres. For dessert Sara had home-made strawberry cobbler and I had a scoop of ice cream. Sara pronounced the cobbler excellent, and gave me a taste, and it was indeed toothsome.
I'll give Carolina Bar-B-Q a 4 on my five scale for BBQ restaurants: 4 out of 5: good; tasty, well-prepared food, staff alert, restaurant clean. I should note that the restaurant also has Texas-style beef brisket BBQ, but I had eaten that on Friday and wanted to try the pork for which NC is famous.
Both of us full of good pigmeat, we drove up the road to Fort Dobbs. There were a number of cars in the parking area, and a member of staff was directing people to slots. The day was sunny, cool, and breezy, in the 50's.
I can't vouch for the authenticity of the reenactors' costumes; I'll just post a selection of photos that I took and let others hash out details.
Hope you enjoy the photos. Click on any of them to see at full size.
2 comments:
Not to pick nits, but the image of the three muskets leaned against that rail made my nuts suck up under my ribcage. The standard of the day was to have the muskets standing vertically in a stack, often with the rammer in the bore to show it was unloaded. Should one of those things accidentally discharge the result could be catastrophic, both to whoever might be hit with the wadding, if a blank load, and to PR. Those things are 12 ga. shotguns that are not conveniently unloadable and must be given the respect due.
Many do not equate "flintlock musket" with "gun". Millions of maimed and dead could argue the point.
Gerry N.
Actually, there was no requirement that muskets be stacked with the rammer in the barrel in the British military of the 1750's.
The muskets used at the site today are not stored loaded and are checked before a firing demonstration and cleared afterwards.
Hope your nuts have sunk back again. ;)
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