Kevin's BBQ Joints

Wilfred Reinke, the Oshawa Ogre and my east coast and Canadian correspondent visited Wink’s King of Barbecue in Salisbury, North Carolina recently and was kind enough to provide me with his review. Here it is in his words:

The area around Salisbury, North Carolina is Chopped Pork Country where the main sauce of choice is Vinegar based with a hint of “Red” as in Ketchup or tomato. The pork is chopped in this region rather than pulled.

In January 2011 I was making my way down to Florida and wanted to sample Barbecue along the way. Driving down from Oshawa, Ontario Canada for 14 hours I ended up spending the night in Salisbury, NC where I met up with a fellow BBQ blogger Cyndi Allison and she suggested that Wink’s was an excellent restaurant that serves up traditional Barbecue that is smoked using wood to fuel the flames. Just like Lexington #1 up the highway from Salisbury Wink’s uses Mill off cuts as a source for their wood planks.

The first thing I noticed driving up and seeing their sign was that they call themselves the King of Barbecue and have a Lion for a logo, which strays from the norm of using a Pig, Cow or Chicken. The King theme fits well since Wink’s is well known by the locals as being the best Barbecue in area. By the way, the parking lot looks empty because I went back to Wink’s on Sunday morning when they were closed to take the outdoor pictures as on the Friday night it was dark out. Inside the restaurant it has the feel of a country diner with lots of space with plenty of booths and the restaurant was tidy and clean.

The menu has lots of choices to choose from and they offer seafood as well, but on this day we all decided to get the chopped Pork. On the advice of Cyndi I also had the Fried Okra and also some Hush-Puppies. Never had Okra before and had a poor experience with Hush-Puppies up in Canada, so I was a little gun shy, but my fears were unfounded as I really enjoyed both sides, The Hush-Puppies were tender in the inside with a nice crispy shell, same with the Fried Okra, I have acquired a taste for those right away.

There are different ways to order the chopped pork and we all decided to have the meat plates with buns on the side so that we can make our own sandwiches and add extra sauce if needed. Because the pork is chopped it is available in a course or fine chop. In most cases Pork Shoulders used for chopped only needs to be heated to an internal temperature of around 185F where for Pulled Pork it needs to smoke longer to around 205F.

Photo of Wink’s courtesy of Roadfood.com

All of our group were full enough from dinner but Jimmy ordered a Banana Pudding which he would save for later. I found the staff to be friendly and the restaurant had a lot of patrons but that did not slow down the service which was exceptional just like the food.

Wood burning Barbecue Joints are not as plentiful as they once were as some cities are changing by-laws not allowing wood burning not to mention that it is a very labour intensive job to run the wood burners. Some Joints have switched to gas or electric while others will continue on burning stick which is a good thing since there is nothing like meat cooked with the smoke from Hickory or Oak planks.

Over all a very pleasant experience, I would consider this to be a very good restaurant that you can enjoy with family or friends.

Wilfred is a BBQ blog writer from Oshawa, Ontario Canada that writes for Oshawa Ogre’s Views, News & BBQ’s, for the Toronto Barbecue Examiner, and can be found on twitter here.

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