Would You Eat BBQ Prepared in a Container Box?

Beef brisket is prepared for the smoker at Lawrence BBQ.

Of course, you would—if it’s prepared by Lawrence BBQ, the latest addition to the barbecue scene in North Carolina and one of the top new barbecue places in the South. The location is as intriguing as the chef and his barbecue. 

Boxyard RTP is the home of Lawrence BBQ.

Located in the state’s Research Triangle Park in Boxyard RTP, a shipping container startup development (really!), Lawrence BBQ is the most vibrant occupant. In the facility’s more than 18,000 square feet, about 40 shipping containers have been repurposed as restaurants, retail stores, and event spaces. While Boxyard RTP is transforming containers into functional spaces, chef Jake Wood and his wife Brandi are enchanting old and new fans of barbecue. 

The line to order at Lawrence BBQ never seems to end.

Don’t plan on table service. You order from a window and pick up a few minutes later at a second window. And plan to wait to order. The line at Lawrence BBQ seems to never end as RTP workers converge there at lunchtime. The most popular orders are Texas-style beef brisket and traditional N.C. pulled pork. Both are slowly smoked over hard oak and hickory wood. Other popular choices include turkey, chicken, and oysters. 

The pickup window with the kitchen in the background.

A large covered picnic-style outdoor seating area is where most customers sit to enjoy their food and also listen to live music, although some orders are carried back to offices for lunch. Lawrence BBQ opens at 11 a.m. (now four days a week), but it often closes when it runs out of food. Clearly a disappointment. 

Live music is featured on Thursdays, Fridays, and Sundays at Boxyard RTP.

To smoke his meats, Wood uses the huge Lang 108 BBQ smoker, which is respected for how well it maintains an even cooking temperature across the racks. Three smokers are lined up in an adjacent open space outside the restaurant’s kitchen (that is in a repurposed shipping container). They will be eventually replaced by a smokehouse that will be built on site. For pork fans, only shoulders are cooked. Because space at Boxyard RTP is so limited, Wood had to abandon his original plan to cook N.C.-style whole hog. 

Chopped wood is ready for the smokers.

To complement a pork sandwich, my wife and I shared an order of tangy coleslaw and a spirited side of baked beans. (The next time I come, I'll order the three-chess mac and also hope that they haven’t sold out of desserts.) The sides are Wood’s take on classic barbecue sides, and everything is made in-house except for the buns. 

A pulled pork sandwich with coleslaw is a popular choice.

This month Robert Moss, barbecue writer for Southern Living, considers Lawrence BBQ as one of the South’s six best new barbecue joints. If you appreciate creative menus, follow the restaurant on Instagram to learn when footlong pork belly corndogs are available. Long strips of pork belly are smoked on a pit, rolled in cornmeal batter, and fried golden brown. 

The menu board is quite simple and easy to update.

The opening of Lawrence BBQ had been highly anticipated because Wood had previously been chef de cuisine at 18 Seaboard, a now-closed restaurant in Raleigh. His reputation in the region expanded when he was recently featured at the Charleston Wine + Food Festival. Plus he’s a hit with fans of white sauce that Alabama is known for since Wood has it as one of his sauces, although N.C. natives will appreciate his vinegar-based sauce. 

Our sides of cole slaw and cue beans.

The opening, originally planned for early 2020, was delayed by the coronavirus pandemic until June. Eventually the business will expand to the top level when Wood opens a leisure bar called Lagoon on what he calls his “Party Deck.” 

The kitchen is constantly busy once Lawrence BBQ opens.

Although Wood spent many years in fine dining in downtown Raleigh, he grew up cooking whole hogs at family reunions and has been smoking meats with his family for most of his life. He was taught everything about hog butchering by Allen Lawrence, his mother’s father, and the restaurant carries his name. (Another family connection is that Grandma Lawrence’s recipe is used for the sweet potato casserole.) 

The central area includes 300 picnic-style seats (covered and uncovered) with a small stage for live music.

Boxyard RTP promotes itself as a “next-generation” retail destination for the more than 55,000 employees who work in RTP. It definitely is a fascinating place to explore or bring guests, and Lawrence BBQ deserves a visit.

Don't worry about staying cool at Boxyard RTP. (Big Ass Fans keep the air circulating.)

The Pitmaster Who Won a James Beard Award

Enjoying barbecue prepared by award-winning pitmasters is a hobby of mine, but it’s not often that the award has been presented by the prestigious James Beard Foundation. Rodney Scott’s Bar-B-Que in Charleston, SC, is the home of the award-winning pitmaster, although his roots in Hemingway, SC, are not that far away.

Cut hardwood stacked outside the restaurant lets you know that you've arrived at Rodney Scott's. 

Opened in July 2016, the restaurant is a continuation of success for Scott, after having been profiled in Time magazine, The New York Times, Saveur, and other publications. With the James Beard Award in 2018 for Best Chef: Southeast, Scott has reached another pinnacle. The award acknowledges Scott’s culinary talent and broadens his reputation nationally. With the recognition came backing for Scott to open his own restaurant on King Street in food-centric Charleston, about 80 miles away to the southeast from his family’s business where he learned to cook whole hogs.

Rodney Scott's BBQ is now a destination on King Street in Charleston.

Having lunch at Scott’s was the most important part of my recent trip to Charleston (although the purpose was to be a judge at a cookoff in the area on the next day). I was surprised how extensive the menu is at the Charleston restaurant. It’s much more expanded than the simple menu of Scott’s Bar-B-Que in Hemingway.

Customers wait to order at the peak of lunch hour.

For my first visit to Rodney Scott’s in Charleston, I had to order the pit-cooked barbecue, although fried catfish was tempting. Pork smoked over oak coals with a little hickory and pecan hardwood carried me back my first visit to Scott’s Variety Store and Bar-B-Que in Hemingway. On his menu in Charleston, Scott proclaims that he gets the wood that he needs every week “to put flavor in what we do — kind of like the chef picking out tomatoes from a garden.” The barbecue flavors of the family’s traditional approach of slowing cooking whole hogs have amazingly been brought intact to the big city.

Rodney Scott is a gracious host, and his smile is as award-winning as his barbecue.

True to the tradition of the Scott’s family style in Hemingway, two slices of white bread accompany the pulled pork on a plate, which is served on a tray and comes with two sides and cornbread (only one side with sandwiches).

This combo plate, served on a tray, includes pork and ribs with beans, greens, cornbread, and white bread. An order of banana pudding is at the top left.

The sides are tempting. Baked mac ‘n’ cheese with a crispy breadcrumb topping seemed to be the customers’ favorite while I was there. Being a traditional Southerner, I ordered the greens. Coleslaw, potato salad, hushpuppies, and baked beans are among the other sides.

A sandwich is served with one side (coleslaw in this order).

Although I didn’t save room for dessert, I ordered some anyway — only one is on the menu, and it’s the only one needed. Traditional banana pudding completes a perfect barbecue lunch. What Scott’s serves reminds me of Sunday dessert when I was growing up. It is that good.

Banana pudding is the only dessert on the menu.

Not every BBQ restaurant has a drive-thru window. Rodney Scott’s does, and it stayed busy, although most customers come to eat either inside or at tables on the patios. The line inside seemed to never end while I was there, and often than a dozen people were waiting to order.

The drive-thru window awaits the first lunch customer after the restaurant has opened.

The excitement that has developed for Rodney Scott’s barbecue in South Carolina is a clue that another state deserves a location. Not to worry. Another restaurant — this one in Birmingham, Alabama — is already on the books and being planned to open in 2019. Now I need to start planning a trip to Alabama.

Whole hogs smoked for hours are ready to be taken from the pits.

Few spaces inside are available during the lunch hour.

The tables outside are popular places to enjoy barbecue.

Finding and Appreciating Jim ‘N Nick’s

The sign by the road says it all.

Have you been traveling down a highway when you saw a sign for a restaurant and thought, “That’s a place I’ve been wanting to visit”? As I was driving through the panhandle of Florida on U.S 98 heading west into Destin, the neon sign for Jim ‘N Nick’s Bar-B-Q caught my attention.

On arrival you are greeted with a basket of mni cheese biscuits, a specialty of Jim 'N Nick's, which also sell the mix in bags.

Jim ‘N Nick’s serves barbecue I’ve wanted to taste since I first learned about it from Southern Foodways Alliance, an organization that documents, studies, and celebrates the food cultures of the American South. As I have attended SFA events, I’ve noticed that Jim ‘N Nick’s is one of the dedicated SFA corporate donors and actively promotes SFA’s events, programs, and workshops.

Riblets, a small plate or appetizer to share, are bite-sized pieces of smoked ribs.

Jim ‘N Nick’s, a casual chain that features slow-cooked barbecue, began in Birmingham, Alabama, where the late Jim Pihakis with his son Nick opened the first restaurant in 1985. Nick learned how to smoke meat slowly over wood coals by apprenticing under Phillip Audrey, pitmaster of Ollie’s Bar-B-Q in Birmingham. Jim ‘N Nick’s has grown to 34 locations in seven states. Almost half are in the state of Alabama, and four are as far away from my home as Denver.

A pulled-pork sandwich comes with two sides -- collards and beans were my choices.

The food definitely doesn’t taste like it was prepared by a chain, perhaps because its network of local producers provides pastured-raised heritage breed pork and each restaurant is locally owned and operated. Jim ‘N Nick’s says, “All BBQ has the same three basic ingredients: smoke, meat, and time,” and it combines all three superbly. It refers to its classic pulled pork sandwich as “pig on a bun,” which John T. Edge, SFA director, calls “the ideal pulled-pork sandwich, the workaday sustenance of all BBQ aficionados.”

John T. Edge's observation is highlighted in the menu.

With such a lofty portrayal, I couldn’t order anything else. With a pulled pork sandwich, I ordered slow-cooked collards and baked beans. To accompany a sandwich or plate, Jim ‘N Nick’s offers several favorite sides, or “scratch-made trimmings.” Also on the menu are mac & cheese, coleslaw, potato (mashed, chips, fried, or baked), fresh fruit, and house or potato salad. Even with several cheese biscuits, I saved room -- a challenge -- to finish with banana pudding.

Banana pudding is always on the menu as a dessert.

Everything brought to the table was superior. It’s hard to pick a favorite, although the cheese biscuits are a great way to begin a meal and the riblets that my wife ordered were perfectly prepared. Although I generally don’t consider a chain to be topic for this blog, Jim ‘N Nick’s is definitely an exception that deserves praise and a place that I would visit when I’m in one of its locations again.