434
PRESS RELEASE
Charlotte, NC – Charlotte pair, Amanda Fisher and Paul Bright, released The Great NC BBQ Map for sale to the general public Friday, Aug. 1. The printed road map is the most comprehensive guide to the state’s barbecue tradition, including information on 434 barbecue restaurants, a list of 42 barbecue festivals and historical information about barbecue in America and its two North Carolina styles.
In a style that combines a modern infographic approach with a traditional road-map format, the map condenses a large amount of information on each barbecue restaurant. Map symbols indicate whether each restaurant cooks the whole hog or part of the pig, what cooking method is used, and what style of sauce is served.
Map creators, Amanda Fisher and Paul Bright, have been working on the project for over a year and have uncovered more barbecue restaurants than previously recorded in any other source or guide. The Great NC BBQ Map is the first to include such depth of detail on each restaurant’s style of barbecue and full information to help patrons plan their visits – information the pair gathered from interviews with each restaurant.
“We’ve always loved working barbecue stops into our own road trips, so we knew what information was missing,” said Fisher. “For some of these places, it’s otherwise impossible to find accurate information, or in some cases, any at all. We wanted to take the guess work out of finding barbecue.”
The map also breaks down the differences in North Carolina’s two styles of barbecue – Eastern style and Piedmont style (also known as Lexington or Western style). “I think we dispelled some myths, there,” Fisher said. “A lot of people think that barbecue in the Piedmont has a thicker tomato-based sauce, but both styles are vinegar-based. Piedmont sauce has just the tiniest bit of ketchup or tomato-based product and sugar added, but it’s still a thin, vinegary sauce.”
Looking at the map symbols, you can see the influence of geography on each restaurant’s barbecue style. For example, there are heavy concentrations of whole-hog barbecue in Eastern NC, which is historically accurate to that style. There is a strong patch of red to represent Piedmont sauce around the I-85 corridor through Kannapolis, Salisbury, Lexington and up into Winston-Salem. That color starts changing between Burlington and Hillsborough, as sauce transitions to Eastern-style.
There is also a symbol color for other sauces that aren’t traditional to NC, and this color is found most around the borders, as barbecue traditions from South Carolina, Georgia, and Tennessee creep in.
The map also helps you find the anomalies, like the one whole-hog cooker in the far west. “You can see how styles aren’t always confined to their original regions. You’ll find restaurants that blend the styles
and create their own interpretations,” Bright explained. Unlike other barbecue guides, Amanda and Paul haven’t given reviews or rated the restaurants in any way. “Everyone has different tastes. We want people to try the barbecue and decide for themselves what they like,” said Fisher.
“Even though we’ve given people more information on barbecue restaurants than they’ve ever been able to find before, we didn’t want to completely demystify the entire experience. What gives any road trip its magic is that feeling of discovery,” Fisher said. “We’ve found out a lot of interesting things about a lot of these restaurants, like which one raises its own hogs, which ones you can land a plane at, places that are on the river, in a building behind the owners’ house, and that list just goes on. But those are the things that are still left for people to be surprised by.”
The pair emphasize the inclusiveness of the map. “Some restaurants thought they had to pay to get on it, but if they’re a barbecue restaurant, they’re just on the map, period,” Bright said.
Amanda and Paul raised the funding to create the map during a 30-day Kickstarter campaign. The $10,418 covered graphic design, printing, and shipping costs, as well as basic start-up costs. Three hundred thirty-six people from all over the country backed the project, pre-ordering around 500 maps. “It was interesting seeing where all the backers were from. We expected most people to be from NC, but at least half weren’t. I guess everyone loves barbecue, and people have ties to North Carolina or plan to travel here,” Bright explained. Perhaps the most surprising state a pledge come from: Alaska.
Once the Kickstarter campaign concluded, hundreds more signed up for a waiting list to order the map, with orders now rapidly coming in since Friday.
The Great NC BBQ Map is truly a North Carolina product, conceptualized by Amanda and Paul in Charlotte, designed in Raleigh, and printed by Meredith-Webb Printing Company in Burlington.
For the graphic design, Amanda and Paul worked with Chris and Elizabeth Boyette, who comprise the Raleigh-based husband and wife team Good-South. Good-South is most well known for their label design for Slingshot Coffee Company’s Cold Brew bottles, featured on Buzzfeed’s 34 Coolest Food Packaging Designs of 2012.
“We really wanted to bring together a group of North Carolina minds for this project to give the map a great southern feel,” Amanda said. “Everyone who worked on this project is completely obsessed with barbecue. We’d talk to the designers or the printers, and they were all ravenous for barbecue from working on this map.”
Bright confessed, “I can’t even begin to count the number of barbecue sandwiches Amanda and I have had this year. And the funny thing is, at home, we’re pretty close to vegetarian.”
You can order The Great NC BBQ Map online at www.thegreatbbqmap.com. Maps will also become available at restaurants and shops across the state in the coming months.
Before you comment
The comments section is here to provide a platform for civil dialogue on the issues we face together as a local community. Xpress is committed to offering this platform for all voices, but when the tone of the discussion gets nasty or strays off topic, we believe many people choose not to participate. Xpress editors are determined to moderate comments to ensure a constructive interchange is maintained. All comments judged not to be in keeping with the spirit of civil discourse will be removed and repeat violators will be banned. See here for our terms of service. Thank you for being part of this effort to promote respectful discussion.