strawberries in paris

Going Home for Pork

Now I swear this is the last restaurant post in a while! I have actually been cooking at home, promise!! Well on the way back from SC, Ned and I wanted to continue our search for good barbeque through NC and VA. I found this place in Lumberton, NC and we stopped to get lunch and I wasn’t too impressed although Ned thought it was definitely alright to chow down on… Around 5:00 when I was driving through Richmond and Ned was asleep, I concocted the idea that I could get a strawberry milkshake at Carl’s in Fredericksburg for dinner! (delirious driving I tell you…) After Ned woke up I realized I would have to feed him also! So I remembered back to my college days and that there is a barbeque place literally walking distance from MWC!

Well we stopped there for dinner and I was so happy with the service and food that we got. We got to sit at the counter and chat with a newbie freshman music major at Mary Wash while we ate. And the cook came out mid-meal to see how our barbeque was! Not as good as Scott’s but definitely a keeper for our trip. The ‘Slaw on Sand’ is the key for a great bar b-q sandwich here! Follow the link and go check it out!

So a bit more about the place in Lumberton to do them justice; They did a minced pork and the base pork flavor was very meaty! Very concentrated pork stock kind of flavor. They had a basic slaw and a vinegar based bbq sauce and with those on the sandwich Ned loved it. But I wasn’t so impressed. Now on to the Fredericksburg food!

Here is their menu- pretty cheap, eh?? And the portions are just as big as Andy Nelson’s up in B-more but maybe that was because the chef was being extra generous that night (as he mentioned when he was out of the kitchen talking to us).

Ned ordered a half rack of ribs and he ordered it with green beans and potato salad. The green beans (which I also had) are not as good as the ones from Rub (which I have been to a couple of times and am amazed that I haven’t blogged about it!), but they were cooked nicely…maybe could have been salted a bit more. The potato salad was just great! A nice spice topped it and it was creamy and delicious, just like it should be. Lastly, the ribs left more to be desired. They were very tender, but not very smokey. Ned also had a so-so opinion of the barbeque sauce because it was too sweet for his taste…. when he mixed it with the hot sauce on the counter it was more to his liking.

I ordered a bbq sandwich and a small order of beans (see the health food I’m trying to include in my life ) The barbeque has a nice size pull to it (does that make any sense? I guess I’m trying to say that I don’t like the minced up barbeque I had in Lumberton…), but the flavor didn’t have a nice deep smokiness to it that I like. But the slaw, oh the slaw! That is what made this sandwich! Ned and I went to Andy Nelson’s last weekend for lunch and I was saying to him, if I could have the barbeque from Scott’s with the slaw from Allman’s and the sauces from Andy Nelson’s I would be in hog heaven! Anyways, back to the slaw… it was so moist and rich and I guess mayonnaisey, that it just brought that sandwich to a new level. I also ordered a half and half sweet tea, which made me very happy!

So ya’ll if you’re ever in Fredericksburg, stop by my alma mater and go get some pork with slaw! You won’t be dissapointed! And then go to Carl’s and finish filling up on ice cream!

 the minced pork was very pork-y (very flavorful), and i really liked the sandwich with the bbq, slaw, and vinegar-based sauce.  i think that you didnt like it because of the texture of the minced pork, and perhaps it was too pork-y maybe?