Fork It Over The Intrepid Adventures of a Professional Eater-Mantesh Unknown (books to read for 13 year olds .txt) 📖

inside. “C’mon in, we’re open,” he said, explaining that he’d been on the premises since three a.m., cooking pork.

Parker’s place had once been a service station, pretty common in the barbecue business. He’d remodeled it himself, adding overhead fans, wood-grain booths, brown vinyl benches, pig paraphernalia, and baskets of artificial flowers. His sandwich was filled with plenty of chopped pork, and it was correctly served at room temperature, which I believe is a holdover from the days when refrigeration was a luxury. On top of the pork was a dollop of decent coleslaw.

Up to that point, the sandwich was pretty standard, but there were two modifications I’d never seen. The bun looked as though it had been placed on the grill with an anvil set on top of it, because it was a little warm and a lot squished. Then there was Parker’s tour de force, a slice of crisp skin atop the chopped pork. I’ve eaten plenty of chopped pork laced with bits of skin, and I’ve always admired the resulting crackle and crunch, but this was the first time I’d seen a whole slice added to the sandwich the way a slice of American cheese is added to a burger.

“How do you like that?” asked Parker, when he saw me take the skin from the sandwich for a closer examination. I just nodded, not wanting to tell him that the skin seemed a distraction. I ended up eating it separately, munching it like a wafer. The real problem I had with his sandwich was vinegar-related. Parker bottles and sells his own brand of vinegar sauce, and he is too generous with it, sprinkling in so much that his sandwich tastes more like vinegar than pork.

Still, I was so thankful to be sitting there, I smiled happily throughout my meal. When I paid the bill, I noticed that the sandwich came to $2.12, and his explanation of how he settled on that sum was too complicated for me. Mostly, the eastern North Carolina sandwich sells for $2.00–$2.50, and there is no reason to stop anywhere that charges more.

About twenty minutes away, right on Route 70, was Wilber’s, a near-legend in barbecue country. Just past Wilber’s, off on the other side, was McCall’s Bar-B-Que & Seafood. McCall’s worried me, not because of the way it spells barbecue—it’s the same food, whether it’s written 2 1 6

A L A N R I C H M A N

barbecue, BBQ, or bar-b-que—but because it doubles as a fish restaurant. Barbecue owners who sell fish tend to forget they’re in the pork business. I’m particularly wary of the ones who fry croakers, whatever they are, because there’s nothing worse than sitting down to a meal in a barbecue place that smells like a fried-croaker place.

Wilber’s wasn’t a whole lot more promising. There was a sign outside offering two specials of the day, one of them spaghetti with tossed salad and the other a fish plate that came with two vegetables. I don’t like to see greens on barbecue menus, although I understand that cabbage is required for coleslaw.

To my surprise, each made a first-class sandwich. I’d rate Wilber’s slightly better, because the pork was chunkier and more peppery. At Wilber’s, I had my second and last sweetened ice tea of the trip. I’d promised myself that I would drink only sweetened iced tea, because that’s what the locals like, but after a big glass at Parker’s and another at Wilber’s, I was trembling from sugar shock. Sweetened iced tea in North Carolina isn’t a beverage; it’s an intravenous glucose drip. From then on I drank unsweetened tea—identified as “untea” on my check at McCall’s.

I was way ahead of schedule at this point, because eating in New York had made me forget how quick and efficient service can be everywhere else. Waitresses who work the barbecue circuit have a routine.

Once you’re seated, they take your order within thirty seconds. A minute later they’re back with tea, utensils wrapped in a paper napkin, and an apology for keeping you waiting for your meal. Two more minutes pass and your sandwich arrives. I had eaten three lunches in Goldsboro, and it wasn’t yet one p.m.

I had one more stop, a catering firm known as Alton’s, open to the public only three days a week. I figured any place that exclusive had to be worth finding, even if it was on the road leading to the Goldsboro-Wayne Municipal Airport, and nobody I asked had ever heard of the Goldsboro-Wayne Municipal Airport. It took me almost an hour of high-speed driving before I found what I believe is the world’s only unmarked municipal airport, and the more lost I got the more certain I was that I F O R K I T O V E R

2 1 7

was in for the barbecue experience of my life. That’s the sort of optimism required when searching for a remote restaurant you’re sure you’ll never find. When I finally arrived, I saw that the barbecue was being prepared in some sort of pig cooker on wheels. I liked the idea that locals never go anywhere without dragging their barbecue behind them.

As I walked inside, I heard the sweetest of sounds, the thunk of a cleaver chopping away at pork. Alton’s resembled a Grange hall hired for a family reunion. There were long tables set with plastic tablecloths, and the chairs looked to be the kind that fold up for storing in a shed, although I tested mine and it refused to bend. Every table had four unmarked bottles of sauce on it, but I ignored them. I never add sauce to barbecue sandwiches, figuring it will be interpreted as an insult, the way shaking salt on a plat du jour angers fancy French chefs.

The sandwich at Alton’s was tasty enough, although it came on one of those horribly squished rolls and contained so little meat it was about as filling as an hors d’oeuvre.