Raleigh's North Carolina Vinegar Base Barbecue Carryout

You can take home North Carolina’s famous vinegar base barbecue from Smithfield’s Chicken ‘N Bar-B-Q carry out. We first experienced this…well… right in Smithfield! A few years ago, we were coming back from Eddie Money’s free concert performance at Smithfield’s annual “Ham and Yam Concert”. That’s just the catchy name they gave it. I’d been to an Eddie Money concert before.  He played at the Waterfront Festival in Old Town Alexandria. That was kinda wild to have a celebrity musician perform in such a down home suburban way…but I guess he does a lot of these town concerts. Well…the one in Smithfield, if you’ve never been to Smithfield is a country town outside Raleigh. It’s closer to the I-95 Carolina Premium Outlet Malls and there’s a bunch of car dealerships and businesses out that way. But to us Raleigh-ans, it’s still out in the country. It’s a good thing in many ways… you picture that’s where June Cleaver would’ve lived. A simpler life where people live in mostly ranch and traditional homes with alotta land and they take care of their neighbors. There’s appreciation for hard work. And people don’t get caught up with techno-gadgets and buzzing around here and there.

Anyway, every year this town of Smithfield puts on this concert, and I’ve never forgotten it. It was one of the best concerts I’d ever been to. Of course it was great to hear Eddie Money jam to his”Two Tickets in Paradise”… LIVE!  But the real reason it was such a good time was because we got to bring Apollo and hang out with the Smithfield crowd. We laid out our blanket and we weren’t too far from the stage. And we just felt like we were surrounded by such nice hometown folks with their red and white checkered blankets, who just wanted to have a good time without all the drinking, trash, and tail gating you deal with at other concerts of this size. It was just clean ‘ol fun that you could bring your kids to. And the May weather as usual in the Triangle area, was spectacular.

After the concert ended, we got in the car and headed home…and we were hungry and thought…hmmm, wouldn’t it be a good idea if we brought some barbecue home with us?  Nothing more appropriate to end the North Carolina night with some down home North Carolina famous vinegar base barbecue.

We had seen Smithfield’s sign on our way to the concert. So on the way back, we stopped and went through Smithfield’s drive thru. Yup…we didn’t even have to get out of the car! We placed our order and like fast food, it was ready in a jiffy.

We got some barbecue, potato salad, cole slaw, and hush puppies. We made our plates and I’m tellin’ you the barbecue was some GOOD eatin’! A ‘lil fatty, but at the time…. really GOOD! It had that light vinegar base barbecue sauce that North Carolina is famous for. I could eat that every week.  I mean there’s nothing I could really eat every day without getting sick of it, except for maybe a banana.

And, after the barbecue leftovers were gone, I wanted more. But Smithfield’s in Smithfield was about about 45 minutes away, so I had checked online to find a barbecue place closer to home. And yes!  …there’s a Smithfield’s in Cary/Morrisville that’s a heck of a lot closer.

We’ve been to another barbecue place called White Swan that I think is really the best… and that was my first choice, but we haven’t found one locally. Have you heard of White Swan? We’ve only been to one at the East Carolina beaches and on the way home from the beach. They have a 50 year old “secret” recipe.  Maybe one of these days they’ll go on Oprah and share it!

Category: Raleigh Restaurants