I’ll come right out and say it: I’m a Western barbecue devotee through and through. Despite living in North Carolina since the late 1980s, I was a late convert to barbecue, mostly because Raleigh has so little in the way of good ‘cue - at least, when you compare it to the back roads and small towns of the state.
Then I married a native of Hickory, a faithful disciple of Lexington BBQ (both the style and the restaurant), and my choice was made. At the same time, a question came up: what had taken me so long?