Ralph's Barbeque

I live in North Carolina now. Some of you who know me are aware of the fact that I prefer living on the west coast. It’s not that I don’t like North Carolina or the east coast it’s just that given my druthers, I would prefer to live on the west coast. It’s a totally different vibe there. People are more casual in dress and manner and that is a big part of Bob.

The truth is that there are good and bad things about every place. There are good and bad things about almost everything in life and I think one of the big things that separates sane people from the majority of us is the ability to discern those differences and not let them drive you nuts. Life is full of good and bad things and you have to learn to deal with it or lose your mind.

One of the truly great things about North Carolina is the barbeque. You know I love that eastern style pulled or chopped pork. I’ve raved about it here, many a time.

My First Helping

As I write this I am sitting in a Starbucks in Roanoke Rapids, NC with a full belly and a happy heart. My wife and I are visiting this fair city today. Roanoke Rapids is about half way between Raleigh, NC and Richmond, VA, right next to Interstate 95. On the other side of I-95 is the small community of Weldon, NC and that is the home of Ralph’s Barbeque. I just had the luncheon buffet and I could not be more pleased with my meal. I have had barbeque in many places and cooked in many styles but today was my first buffet. I am very pleased.

I'll have just a little bit more, please.

Let’s talk about what they had on this all-you-can-eat, $7.99 including drink, barbeque lunch buffet.

First of all, they had the eastern style vinegar based pork I love both chopped and pulled. They also had the tomato based sweet sauce pork as well, but I avoided it. It may be fine for some people (like my wife) but it is really not for me.

Pigs relaxing before the barbeque

A virtual cornucopia of side dishes was included in the lunch. They had sweet potatoes, succotash, macaroni and cheese, beef stew with potatoes, cooked cabbage, collard greens, stewed tomatoes, barbecued chicken and much more.

One good old southern side they had was green beans. Now you may have eaten green beans in many different styles during your life but they have a very special way of cooking them in the south. In the south they like to cook them to death. I enjoy green beans when they are just a little under done with a touch of crispness to them but in the south most people prefer that they just plain melt in your mouth and cooking them to death achieves this goal. I once heard a fine southern gentleman state that you should not have to chew green beans if they are cooked properly. They should be like eating gravy. They should just melt in your mouth. These were true southern style cooked green beans and they were delicious.

They had other beans on the buffet as well and if you are a regular reader you are aware of my feelings about side dishes and beans in general. I am a bit particular about my beans.

Recently I had occasion to make a crock pot of my own beans and I was quite proud of them. My recipe is really very simple. I buy several cans of a variety of beans including navy beans, pintos, black-eyed peas, kidney beans and whatever else I see and think would taste good. I drain them and add them all to a crock pot. Then I fry up some chopped bacon with a couple of cloves of garlic and a chopped onion. All of this goes into the pot with a can of drained, diced tomatoes and some salt and pepper. Cook them on high for 5 or 6 hours and they are about ready to eat.

The beans at Ralph’s were not done the way I make them but I have no complaints. I really liked them very much. They were a simple cooked bean dish of just white beans. I don’t know for sure what kind of beans they were but they looked like small navy beans and they tasted wonderful.

Everything was outstanding. The pulled pork was perfect, the collards were outstanding and when I had only the smallest amount of space left in my gut I got some banana pudding. Exquisite. I am back in the south and there are wonderful reasons to be happy about that.

The Great Waitresses of Ralph's Barbeque

There is one more thing I need to mention about this dining experience. The waitresses were extremely helpful and polite. I love to see a waitress smile and they had great smiles and courteous attitudes. Hospitality can often carry a restaurant but at Ralph’ it is just the icing on the cake. If you are traveling I-95 you should make it a point of stopping at exit 173 for lunch or dinner. This is what eastern North Carolina is all about.

Look for this sign and smile.

In closing let me say that there is only one thing I regret about the whole experience. I wish I could have seen the place at night. There are little neon, pig shaped lights that run across the top of the building and on the big sign out by the road and I bet they look great lit up after dark. As I stated earlier, you just have to learn to take the bad with the good. Being there in the daytime meant that the only things that were lit up were my eyes and my stomach.

Yum Yum.

Good Pig.

Prissy Polly's Restaurant in Kernersville, NC

Barbeque is a word of many meanings. In some places it is considered a verb and in others a noun. For the sake of simplicity I will be referring to it here in the latter sense.

Barbecue can be made of pork or beef and I suppose just about anything else in the way of meat. I don’t really know if there is such a thing as barbecue made from fish, but I would not be all that surprised if someone told me there was.

I have enjoyed barbeque that was made from beef but after living twenty years in North Carolina I tend to think of it as pig. Some may call it pork but I think we should be honest about what we are eating here.

Recently the pig itself has been suffering from a bit of negative publicity. I am referring to the most recent swine flu outbreak. I pray that this outbreak will be contained and that no more lives will be lost. But I do love to eat the pig.

Having just returned to North Carolina after a leave of almost four years I was glad to find myself rolling along I-40 and headed in the direction of Kernersville, NC as the lunch hour was approaching. Kernersville is the small town between Greensboro and Winston-Salem that has my favorite barbecue in the world and with that in mind I call the lunch hour any time they are open and I am nearby.

There is a major divide in terms of barbecue in North Carolina that is just as distinct and almost as fought over as the Civil War was some 150 years ago. On the eastern side of the state they slow cook their pig and serve it with a vinegar sauce that has hot pepper flakes in it and some brown sugar. In the western side of the state they use a more traditional tomato based sauce. This is the sauce that most resembles what is sold in supermarkets like KC Masterpiece or any one of a number of name brand commercially produced sauces. Most people prefer one over the other and it has been known to divide families. The dividing line in the state between these competing sauces is generally regarded as Lexington, NC and the western sauce is sometimes referred to as Lexington barbecue. Most restaurants sell one or the other and that is one of the reasons I really like Prissy Polly’s in Kernersville. They serve them both. The live together side by side in the same building and they act as a guide to the whole human race. There is no reason we can’t all coexist as well as these two different, yet equal, sauces do at this fine dining establishment.

The Large Barbecue Plate

Today I got a chance to eat at Prissy Polly’s for the first time in over four years and what a treat it was. I ordered the large barbecue plate with the eastern sauce. My wife chose a western style barbecue sandwich. We too are different but equal.

I love that stuff but that is far from the only reason to stop and dine at Prissy Polly’s.

You would think that beans are a side dish that would be hard to ruin and yet I cannot tell you how many times I have eaten in a lunch room or diner and been disappointed by my bean experience. They are usually just so bland and simple. It is a shame because they are not all that difficult to make really well. I know this because I have made beans many times and feel very confident in my recipe. Prissy Polly does them right.

The other great dish they do that goes so well with the barbecue is their collard greens. Once again, they are not all that difficult to make but somehow they are often made very bland and tasteless. Prissy Polly does them right.

I will miss the west coast and I hope I return again but I am going to enjoy myself living in the land of my favorite barbecue. I am back in NC. The pork industry should consider itself forewarned.

We finished our trek yesterday and are now staying with my daughter and her fiancée in Raleigh, NC. It is great to have a break from motel rooms and road food. It is fantastic to see our children and other relatives who are living in the Old North State. We were on the road for nine days and traveled a total of 3684 miles. I totaled our expenses at $1590.23. The quote to ship the car was over $1700.00 and we would have had to buy airline tickets to move ourselves. The trade off in time was more than worth it in our eyes because we will have the memories for the rest of our lives. To those of you who have followed the trip, thanks. To those friends we left behind, we look forward to the time when we see you all again.

Statue in New Mexico

We journeyed across the state of New Mexico today flying like the wind that tried to push our van off the highway at times and staggering like a man (or woman) with a bum leg at others. There was quite a bit of slowdown due to major work being done on I-40 in New Mexico.

Our motel stay of last evening was the worst we have encountered so far, but it was also the least expensive. The room smelled of smoke that someone had tried to discreetly cover up with some sort of foul antiseptic. If it hadn’t been so cheap or perhaps if we had not been so darn tired, we probably would have tried to find another. In any event, we lived through it and decided that we needed to try to make some better time today and get at least 500 miles in. In addition to trying to travel more miles, we also were going to lose two hours of our day because of time zone changes. Arizona is in Mountain Time but when we moved into it out of Pacific Time we did not change since they do not observe Daylight Saving Time. New Mexico however does and since we were planning on crossing New Mexico and staying in Texas we knew we would lose another hour since they are in the Central Time Zone. Very confusing. Note that Arizona by not observing Daylight Saving Time once again acts as an example of how each state operates in its own manner.

But there were worse things in store for us.

As my wife stepped off the curb after checking us out of the motel, she slipped and fell down on the cement pavement. I rushed out of the car to help her to her feet but she had banged her ankle quite badly. After seeing her to the car and wondering if we should go to an emergency room or at least try to see a doctor she sent me for some ice. Then we drove across the street to a grocery store and I bought an ace bandage for her ankle.

She spent the day with her feet on the dash, which she happens to like, with an ice pack on it. She also happens to like sleeping, so she did that for a large portion of the day while I listened to some great jazz music. We stopped only when we had to and pushed on across the state.

After arriving at our motel in Vega, TX I got her some fresh ice (she says it does not hurt), a cool drink and then proceeded to the local eatery. The guy at the front desk told me it was good and the name of the place was The Boot Hill Saloon and Grill.

Boot Hill Saloon

I entered at the saloon and took a seat at the bar. A couple of young guys sitting there proceeded to tell me about dry counties in Texas and that I was in one. The long and the short of it was that I had to buy a temporary membership in order to order a beer. I did not find that a problem and then asked for a menu.

I told one of the young guys that since I would probably not be in Texas again for some time that I thought I would get some of the Texas barbecue on the menu. He smiled and shook his head saying, “I really won’t call that stuff Texas barbecue.”

After thanking him for his honesty, I ordered some sliders and finished my beer. So much for authentic Texas food.

P.S. My wife is sitting comfortably and appears to be doing alright with her ankle. I hope she is telling me the truth.

P.P.S. Today I heard some Charles Mingus, Art Pepper, Thelonious Monk, Duke Ellington and Stan Getz. Except for my wife falling and hurting herself it was a pretty good day. We drove 515 miles. Please check out what my wife has to say about today at http://www.managemypractice.com/road-trip/

A fixer-upper in New Mexico