Between snow storms in March, we (John & Jody Douglas from VA, and Bob & Dian Griffin from AK) loaded the station wagon and headed south, looking for the best barbecue we could find.

Jody and I had spent several weeks making a list of Carolina Q joints, mostly from these sources:

Day 1 - lunch

Bar-B-Q Ranch, Harrisonburg VA
The gourmet crew was getting hungry as we approached Harrisonburg VA, so we exited I-81 onto U.S. 11 and stopped at Bar-B-Q Ranch, a former curb-hop drive-in where Jody and I have stopped on motorcycle rides. The barbecue is okay. The decor is impossible to match and hard to rival.
We marked down the barbecue sandwiches for insufficient smoke taste, so-so sauce (red), and a uniformity of texture, which, in my opinion, suggested chopped pork simmered on a stove. Jody had a BLT, which she rated generously. Fries and slaw were about average. One of us
Day 2 - lunch

Herb's Pit Bar-B-Que - Murphy NC
Herb's, the western terminus of the NCBS Trail, is closer to TN than to Murphy, near milepost 5 on U.S. 64. Here we were introduced to whole- shoulder barbecue, not just the Boston Butt with the shoulder blade, but also the Picnic Ham portion of the foreleg. At first I thought the sliced barbecue -- which I tried out of curiosity -- was from the loin. Only later did I understand that it is from the picnic. Leanness and texture are very much like moist loin. Smoked whole shoulders are just about universal in Western NC barbecue (frequently called Piedmont or Lexington barbecue).
The chopped barbecue sandwich's taste and texture were good, as was also true of the sliced (with the loin similarity noted earlier). Slaw, fries, and beans were very good, and the hushpuppies were excellent -- crisp, not too sweet, and not at all greasy.
We were invited to take a look at the pit, which usually burns hickory but was making do with charcoal briquettes. The meat being smoked was chicken, loins, and ribs.
Herb's is well worth a return trip. We'll go back when we're around that corner of NC again, and we'll sample more of the menu. Some of those hushpuppies would be good right now.
Day 2 - dinner

Blue Ocean Seafood Restaurant, Clinton SC
Bob and Dian had other, non-barbecue business taking us to central SC. After crossing the corner of GA, we stopped for the night at Clinton SC, where we ate at a convenient high-volume seafood place next to the motel. Remember, the Griffins are from Alaska and have very high standards for seafood. This place did not measure up. Our advice: Avoid it. An Arby, fries, and a Jamocha shake would have been much better.
Day 3 - lunch

Shealy's Bar-B-Que, Batesburg-Leesville SC
Shealy's rates legend status on Jim Morgan's Carolina BBQ Joints Web site, which is, according to Jim, because it's included in all the books and it gets a lot of friendly reviews. Not here, it won't.
"Buffet Style" is a tip-off that Shealy's is not a hole-in-the-wall Q joint. Shealy's occupies a large building, as the perspective shot along the front shows. Benches are for the clamoring crowds waiting to hit the buffet line. Inside, there are several large rooms for diners, a long, two-sided buffet line for salads, sides, and meat, and a shorter one for desserts, including a soft-freeze machine. The waitresses bring drinks to the table.

The plate has, clockwise from 12 o'clock, chopped barbecue in mustard sauce, corn muffins, chopped barbecue in vinegar-pepper sauce, I dunno, green beans, and pork hash over rice. All of the meat was oversauced; the vinegar-pepper sauce had a raw vinegar taste and not much pepper. The mustard sauce was better. I added Texas Pete to both. The beans, corn muffins, and yellow stuff weren't bad. The apple cobbler with soft-freeze wasn't bad either. Ambience is best characterized as "feed-lot."
We wouldn't go there again even if you were paying. It's not very good food, and it's not good barbecue. This was the consensus low spot of our tour. Note: Steer clear of buffets.
Day 3 - dinner

Hominy Grill, Charleston SC
We met Chris and Tricia Finney for dinner at this charming restaurant in a long, skinny nineteenth century building near downtown. The menu has no barbecue, and it appears that everything it does have is good, with a definite Southern stamp. Chris said don't waste your time looking for barbecue here, wait 'til you get back to NC. (Chris was signed up to cook in the Prestigious Palmetto Pig Pick'n competition in Ladson the next day -- SC State Championship -- which Jim Morgan said would be the best place for us to find good SC barbecue.)

We liked the Hominy Grill so much we went back for breakfast the next morning -- eggs, sausage, grits, biscuits, gravy, all good stuff. (No comments from cardiologists, please.)
Left to right: John, Jody, Tricia, Chris, Bob, Dian.
Day 4 - lunch

Cracker Barrel, North Myrtle Beach SC
I kind of wanted to sample the "atomic" sauce at Scott's Variety Store, but we came at Myrtle Beach via back roads and missed it. Cracker Barrel does cook Southern, and Bob and Dian had never eaten in one, so that's where we had lunch. It was just as uniformly good as they all are.

Then we went on to Myrtle Beach and met Jim Morgan, who was at a television-rich sports bar watching the first day of March Madness with some coworkers and friends. Jim is also a competition barbecuer and the developer of a good Web guide for food tourists like us.
Left to right: Bob, Jim, John.
Day 4 - dinner

Domino's Pizza, Wilmington NC
We got into our hotel fairly late and didn't want to go searching, so we ordered delivery. The deep dish with sausage, mushrooms, and onions wasn't bad. Bob and Dian didn't finish their thin-crust pepperoni.

The next morning we went to see the USS North Carolina Battleship Memorial. The North Carolina served in the Pacific from just before Pearl Harbor until her decommissioning in 1947. She was taken off the Navy's list in 1961 and sold to the people of the state (using $330,000 raised by NC school children, then dedicated in 1962 as a memorial to North Carolinians of all services who died in WWII. The USS North Carolina is docked as a floating museum on the Cape Fear River.
rated the ambience low because there were 6 Virginia State Troopers at the table next to us. Another of us, camera in hand, joked with the Troopers, saying that he had shushed his wife when she asked him to take some pictures of the pigs.

We would go back, not so much because the barbecue is great as because it's a nice, welcoming place, if a little kitschy.
Day 1 - dinner

Ridgewood Barbecue, Bluff City TN
Anticipating that we'd stop before Asheville NC, I found Ridgewood Barbecue on Roadfood.com, where the ratings are glowing.  Bluff City is between Bristol (the "Home of Country Music") and Johnson City TN. We got to the restaurant after 7 p.m. and had a wait, but once we were seated the service was outstanding. After one of us questioned the waitress about the blue cheese appetizer, which she described as a blue cheese dressing dip with saltines, she brought one for each of us, no charge, and it was very good. (We tipped her quite well.)

Ridgewood smokes fresh hams, slices them very thin, then, for each order, piles sliced meat on a griddle, adds sauce, and heats it to serving temperature. It is a very unusual way to do barbecue, and it is absolutely delicious. We were stunned.

The meat has a good smoke taste. The sauce is a little sweet and needs a bit more twang and heat for this group's preference. Sides were pretty darned good, except the beans were judged so-so. Ambience got good marks, partly because we liked the booths and we had a good view of what was going on at the griddle.

Would we go back? We'd go way out of our way to eat there again. A special trip isn't out of the question. Ridgewood set a very high standard for the rest of the tour.
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(A week later, after we got back to VA, we also met Larry and Linda Wolfe for dinner at Sweetwater Tavern in Centreville, a steakhouse and microbrewery. And not a single one of us remembered to bring a camera. It was snowing and sleeting and we were focused on dealing with that, or we probably would have remembered. Larry is another competition barbecuer and the purveyor of a darned good barbecue rub, mysteriously called Wolfe Rub.)
Larry. (Provided by Larry.)
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