The Dillard House

"Yeah, it's that good." An unidentified diner makes a dive for the roastingears at the Dillard House in Dillard Ga.

Do this: Rent a copy of the movie Deliverance. Fast forward to the final scenes, when Burt Reynolds, Ned Beatty and Jon Voight walk into an old inn by the river and are met by an ample woman who feeds them home cooking and puts then up for the night. That woman was Nancy Dillard and her inn was a way station for river rats along the Chattooga in North Georgia for many years. It was her nephew Billy who played the part of the banjo picker in the movie.
The Dillards have had a long tradition of feeding the hungry in the Northeast corner of Georgia, along the Chattooga and the Stekoa. My wife and I find an excuse at least once a year to make the three hour (one way) trip to this picturesque part of the country where the peaks of the Blue Ridge seem to be melting into blue-green lumps and there is still breathing room between the conglomeration of strip malls and fast food joints that has polluted even the smallest of small towns in America.

Our excuse this time was the annual Foxfire Festival that is held on the grounds of an old Rabun school in Dillard Georgia. The Foxfire story deserves a column in its own right. The brainchild of Elliot Wigginton, who received a McArthur Fellowship for his work, Foxfire began as a small magazine written and edited by Wigginton’s Rabun High School English classes. His mission was to record the fading traditions, folklore and ingenuity of the old mountain folk so that it would be preserved for future generations. Forty-three years after its inception, the idea has become a movement, with the magazine still going strong and 14 volumes of The Foxfire Book in print. I stumbled across the first volume of the Foxfire book in a mall bookstore shortly after it was published in 1972. Printed on the cover was a short list of the topics covered: Hog dressing, Log Cabin Building, Mountain crafts and foods, Planting by the signs, Snake lore, Hunting tales, Faith healing, Moon shining. It was all the stuff of stories, some told to me directly, some learned by eavesdropping, that I had heard from the people of my grandfather’s generation since I was a small child. My grandfather, who was a Constable, made extra money busting moon shine still in the foothills of the Blue Ridge during the depression. He fed his family through hard times by hunting in the hills and raising crops and meat on a small holding in northern Greenville County, SC.

One of the stars of the first volume of The Foxfire Book is Aunt Arie, a widower in her eighties at the time of publication who lived in alone a small cabin in the mountains She was immortalized by Jessica Tandy in the Hallmark Hall of Fame movie Foxfire not too many years ago.
Many of the books have old time recipes, including the recipe for Brunswick Stew my wife and I use today. These recipes were most likely repeated from memory into a tape recorder. The measurements are often spotty, and since much of the cooking was done on wood stoves, cook times and temperatures are often only a guess.

Next door to the old Rabun school is the Dillard House, founded by another member of the Dillard family many years ago. The Dillard house is a family style restaurant, meaning you don’t get to pick and choose from a menu, the entire menu is brought to your table in bowls and on plates and you can eat all you want and more. The rustic dining room looks out across the Stekoa valley to the bucolic campus of the Nagoochee school.

It was a chilly, wet afternoon when we stomped the rain off our shoes at the door to the lobby. We had arrived between the breakfast and lunch hours and were given a number. We browsed the gift shop until our number was called and then we were led to a table by the window which gave us a panoramic view of the valley. On the table were a Waldorf salad, a bowl of slaw and a salad of fresh tomatoes, onions and cucumbers in a vinaigrette. It wasn’t long until the rest of the food arrived, and the table top was covered in dishes, bowls and plates. Meats included country ham, barbecued pork ribs, and fried and baked chicken and roast beef. Sides included collards, braised potatoes, cabbage, their marvelous acorn squash souffle, fried apples, green beans, field peas and corn on the cob. Seconds were offered whenever the waitress noticed we had emptied a serving vessel. I took her up on several items including two refills of collards. Dessert was coffee and apple pie a’ la mode.

It’s easy to forgive a restaurant that provides this amount of food for skimping here and there on quality, but at the Dillard House everything is perfectly seasoned. It’s as if a squadron of grandmothers is scurrying around the kitchen putting their best Sunday Dinner efforts into the victuals. More than a meal, this is an experience to be savored. This is not a quick bite. This is slow food, to luxuriate in, taking time to enjoy every morsel. This is food that relaxes, that unleashes brain chemicals usually known only to long distance runners or Alpinists. This food gives you a natural high.

The Dillard house has become my gold standard for good, simple food. It’s about the best use of a twenty dollar bill I can think of.

Diner rating: 5

Brunswick Stew
2 pounds cooked ground beef
1 pound cooked lean ground pork
1 small cooked chicken, chopped
3-4 diced potatoes
1 pint whole kernel corn
1 cup lima beans
2-3 chopped onions
1 pint tomatoes or tomato juice
catsup
chile powder
salt
black and red pepper
worcestershire sauce

The directions say,"Put all ingredients in a big pot and cook for a long time."

From The Foxfire Book, edited by Elliot Wigginton, New York, Random House, 1972

You can almost hear an old mountain woman rattling off the ingredients while tapping her fingers and gazing off into the distance. We substitute boneless skinless chicken breasts, which we boil, then cut into pieces, for the cooked chicken, and we add frozen green peas and a couple of bay leaves. We serve it over rice. The recipe calls for a “pint” of tomatoes and corn because the mountain people preserved their own vegetables in pint or quart canning jars. Of course now you get your tomatoes off the grocery store shelf. Use a 14.5 ounce can of diced tomatoes and frozen corn. This makes a hearty, highly caloric dish. It is designed for people who spend their days chopping wood, herding cattle or hoeing corn, not sitting at a desk punching buttons. Use your own judgment on the spices and condiments. This dish freezes well.

The Dillard House Acorn Squash Souffle

1½ cups mashed acorn squash
½ cup mashed butternut squash
¾ cup granulated sugar
¼ tsp salt
¼ tsp ground ginger
1 tsp vanilla extract
4 eggs separated
½ cup heavy cream
¼ cup butter, melted
½ cup flaked sweetened coconut

Halve the squash and remove the seeds. Boil the squash until tender. Let cool and remove the pulp and puree in a blender or food processor.

Preheat oven to 325 degrees. Lightly grease a 2-quart casserole dish and set aside. Beat the squash well in an electric mixer. Add the sugar, salt, ginger and vanilla and beat well. Mix in the cream and melted butter. In a separate bowl beat the egg whites until stiff but not dry. Fold the egg whites into the squash mixture. Pour into the casserole and sprinkle with the coconut. Bake 30-40 minutes until puffed and lightly browned.

(from www. projects.eveningedge.com/recipes)

Pigging Out

High Marks. Hite's Barbecue occupies a small cinderblock building on a two lane road in West Columbia, SC. Note the smoke emanating from the rear of the building and the pickup, which obscures a large pile of wood by the back door.

The Caroliner Diner's Rules for Spotting a Good Barbecue Restaurant

It’s a shame to go to a ‘Q joint and plunk down good money for sorry meat. So how do you know if a BBQ place is good or not before having to pay nine or ten bucks for a plate? Below are some guidelines that have served me in the past. Think of your favorite place and see if it doesn't fit several of these criteria.

1) SMOKE. Al Gore be damned! There must be smoke, and to hell with the carbon footprint! Real barbecue is cooked with smoke, and the smoke has to come from good hardwood trees. You should see it, and smell it when you pull into the lot, or at least when you get out of the car.

2) WOOD. There should be a wood pile on the premises, and it should be used for cooking. Oak will pass, but Hickory is king. Mesquite will do in a rush if you’re out west. Other viable woods are apple and pecan, though these are scarce and expensive and usually only used to put a finish on the meat. Beware of “decorator wood” that is only for show where the pork is actually cooked on a gas flame.

3) FAT PEOPLE. Fat people love to eat and usually know good food when they taste it. If there are no fat people eating there, the food is probably only so-so. Beware of a restaurant filled with skinny people in exercise gear. Those people don’t know how to eat.

However fat people can’t be the sole indicator. They sometimes indicate food that is simply cheap.

4) PORTABLE COOKING RIG parked outside. Serious barbecue cookers love to compete with their fellows to see who can make the best barbecue at a given time and place. This is where their skill is honed to a high art and where they learn secrets from other cookers about how to improve their product.

5) TROPHIES. If you’re gonna compete, you better be able to win at least once in a while.

6) PIGS. Like the ancient Minoans who worshipped bulls and kept images of them around house, True BBQ aficionados keep porcine totems around them. The more pictures, statues and stuffed pigs in the dining room the better the restaurant. One of my favorites is a sign hanging on the wall at Henry’s Smoke House in Greenville, SC. Inside the outline of a pig, it says, “People Eat People’s Meat."

Nice Rack. Stacks of decorator wood outside Maurice's Piggy Park in Cayce, SC. The Barbecue is actually cooked next door.
7) COUNTRY MUSIC has to be playing on the speakers. Anyone who cooks pork in the presence of any other mode, except gospel or bluegrass has no sense of proportion.

8) PICKUP TRUCKS in the parking lot. A lot full of BMW’s indicates the pork is either too expensive or too artsy or both.

9) SAUCE ON THE SIDE, not on the meat. If they have to sauce the meat to make it palatable, there’s something wrong with it.

10) THE BUILDING. Don’t even slow down for one of those cookie cutter fancy brick and steel facades that look like they were built last year. Somebody has to pay for that building. Real barbecue cookers build the pit first and then as an afterthought put some kind of enclosure around it, perhaps getting the idea when they hear the first raindrops sizzle on the grill. Look for a simple wood or cinderblock building, preferably out in the country. The fewer lanes to the road that goes there the better. Extra points are given if it has a gravel parking lot, tables in the yard, or a porch to eat on. Barbecue is meant to be eaten outside where the smoke in the air enhances the smoke in the meat for a complete barbecue experience. Screens are optional.

11) THE MENU should have barbecue as the main, or only item. If the menu has the barbecue listed somewhere down there between the Fiesta Chicken and the Shrimp and Sausage Penne, It probably comes to the restaurant frozen in a tub or plastic bag.

12) A SINGLE ENTITY. Beware of chain restaurants. A man runnning a pit out in the country is free to live his dream. Chains come with a large beauracracy whose main job quickly becomes maintaining the status quo vs. making excellent food.

I Couldn't Eat the Sausages

People are always telling me where to go. Once-in-a-while they’re talking about a restaurant. When two of my colleagues individually recommended the Thunderbird in Florence, I decided the next time I was down there I would give it a try. My chance came a few weeks ago. The Thunderbird is actually a trio of businesses sitting just off I-95. Included are a motel, a bar and grill, and a “country buffet.”
First the good part: for about $10.00 you can gorge yourself with a wide variety of food. The day I was there, entrees included fried chicken, ham, turkey and dressing stewed beef, and some rather lewd-looking fried sausages. Sides included macaroni and cheese, green beans, collard greens, and candied yams, among others.
The salad bar was pretty extensive and the vegetables were all either shredded or coarsely chopped making them easy to handle. There was a wide variety of desserts including two or three cobblers and banana pudding and a menagerie of cake and pie slices.
However, what the buffet offers in quantity, it lacks in quality. The ham was full of gristle. The collards and many of the other vegetables seemed to have been dumped directly from cans, with little or no seasoning. Much of the food was bland. Some of it tasted downright strange. Three saving graces were the fried chicken, the salad bar and the apple cobbler.
I couldn’t bring myself to eat the sausage.
The tea is served in small 12 ounce glasses, which get emptied pretty quickly, though the servers are attentive most of the time. Soft drinks aren’t on the menu.
The place was busy with an early supper crowd and most of the customers seemed satisfied with their meals, but I didn’t see a lot of people returning to the bar for a second pass.
At the Thunderbird you can shovel in food until you throw up. Just don’t let it spend a lot of time around your tongue.
Diner rating: 3
Next up: How to spot a good barbecue joint.

Luck of the Draw

Lake High stands in the middle of about fifty people huddling in the shade of the small canopy on the football field of Myrtle Beach’s Market Commons.
“One thing I can assure you new people is that every event after this will be better,” he says, in his typical manner of trying to put everything in a positive light.
We are at the Myrtle Beach, Boogie and Barbeque festival on the grounds of the former Myrtle Beach Air Force base.
High has had a frustrating morning. As marshal of the judging for the South Carolina Barbecue Association, (SCBA) he is responsible for making sure the event runs smoothly for both the judges and the cookers.
This year the Beach Boogie and Barbecue organizers threw him a curve. They invited another set of judges from the rival Kansas City Barbecue Society to judge the event, and let cookers choose which group would judge their barbecue. It was apparently a bid to increase interest, but the accompanying hike in the entrance fee may have had the opposite effect. This year the entries are down by a third, and the competition between judging organizations means that there will be only about a dozen teams for SCBA to judge.
The two judging groups were supposed to share a large tent, but we arrive onsite to find that SCBA has been banished to the other end of a football field. We trudge the 150 or so yards to the other tent, consoled by the fact that we have to walk through the cooking area where we savor the aroma of smoked pork which must be what it’s like to walk into Heaven’s dining hall.
We arrive at the other tent, but after only a few minutes, a golf cart pulls up and an event manager tells us we are in the wrong tent and points us back across the field to a small canopy near the opposite goal post. The canopy is about half the size needed and there is not enough equipment. Some of us will be sitting out in the September sun for the entire event. Calls go out tables, chairs and sunscreen.
On top of it all, Lake has about 20 “newbies” to contend with, including this reporter. These novice judges must be shepherded through the judging process, and their scores won’t count. Usually each novice table has a trainer, but today only one trainer Greg Gladney, is available, and he has the unenviable task of guiding 18 or 20 novice judges through the event.
Each of us is given a blotter; an 11 x 17 sheet of heavy paper divided into 8 equal sections on which to put our samples. Score sheets are passed out and we are given our preliminary instructions. Greg, a rotund, gregarious, bearded fellow who looks to be in his late thirties, sporting his “Master Judge” straw hat explains that each box will be passed around the table twice. The first time is for judging aroma and appearance. On the second pass we are to get a few ounces of barbecue and place it on our mats to complete the judging.
At the appointed time, High steps away from the tent and fires off one of those compressed air horns that boaters use in emergencies and drunks annoy people with at sporting events. It’s a signal that the cookers have only 20 minutes to present their product to the check-in table.
This is “blind box” judging, where we don’t see the cookers, or their pits. The plain, Styrofoam boxes containing the barbecue are identified only by a numbered ticket taped to the top of the box. One big difference between SCBA and KCBS is that the KC guys do onsite judging, where they go out and visit the cook teams and judge the meat, as well as the organization and cleanliness of the site. Some say that onsite judging is more subjective, and it’s easy to see how cookers might try to influence the judging.
Earlier as we walked through cookers row, A man ran out from his pit and greeted us enthusiastically. “Are you guys judges?” he asked.
“Were SCBA.” I say.
“Oh,” he mutters and unceremoniously turns and trundles back to his tent.
But as one KCBS judge confided, “You get some really good barbecue.”

The first sample is passed around. I get the box first, and find it almost empty. The sample was puny to begin with and the official judges table took most of it. I look at the sample, and flap the lid like I saw a master judge do a few seconds earlier to get a good whiff of the aroma. The pork is coarsely chopped and has good color, but the smell is a little off, as if the meat is not fresh. I put my numbers down in the boxes on the score sheet. On the second pass, I get a few scraps of meat. Greg has told us to get our hands in the meat, to pull at it to check for tenderness—The easier it pulls apart the more done it is. This sample is pretty tender but the flavor is just a little off. I fill out the rest of the boxes on my score sheet and tally them up. The sore is 10.5.
The samples come around quickly. The next two are finely chopped; almost minced. When I total up the scores, I find even though I have carried out the scores to two decimal places, (some nerds will go to three) the second and third samples are tied at 10.86. Not wanting to have a tie score, I go back and forth in each category between the two samples. My concentration is interrupted by the receipt of my fourth and last sample. It is not in the running. Pale and underdone, it has almost no flavor at all (after the judging I gave some to my wife, who thought it was chicken). I scored it a scant 7.9.
After going back and forth again between the two tied samples, I finally decide that sample three is over-spiced, and shave a few points which allows sample two to eek out the win.
After the judging, Greg interviews our table.
“Which sample was the best?” he asks.
To my relief, the consensus was sample two.
He polls the table to see what every one’s score was. The scores were all in the 10-12 range, with one person scoring a thirteen.
Greg points out that the average score is usually between 13 and 17. He makes no comment about our lower scores, leaving us to sort that out ourselves. Rookie mistake? Harsh standards?
I decide that, for me at least, it was neither. I feel the overall quality of the
product to be lower than I had expected. Despite the talk of good barbecue at these events, I find these offerings to be of lower quality than I could have gotten at, say, Bucky’s in Greenville, or Belly’s in Lexington, SC.
I have no explanation for this except that, since I only tasted a small number of the samples prepared for the event, it could have been just the luck of the draw.
Up next: The Thunderbird, Florence, SC.

Photo courtesy of Lora Garrett

Hunt'n for the Good Stuff

The Gospel Travelers serenade customers on the big front porch of Hunt'n' Camp

The night I visited Hunt ‘n' Camp, on U.S Highway 25 North of Travelers Rest, SC, a bluegrass gospel band was belting out old favorites on the restaurant’s big wrap-around porch. The porch was lined with large rocking chairs for the adults and small ones for the kids and they were all full of people listening to the music while waiting for their names to be called.
Inside, the décor is enough to scare the beJesus out of you average PETA sympathizer as the walls are lined with menagerie representing a good portion of the fauna of the upstate of South Carolina, including--and this is by no means an exhaustive list-- a boar’s head, a bobcat, and the heads of four deer. The one above my table, --a nice eight pointer-- had an arrow, presumably the one that brought it down-- resting in its antlers. But I wasn’t there to admire animal carcasses, I was there to eat them.
They have a pretty good menu, but for around nine bucks, you can get that wonderful invention that has kept heart surgeons in BMW’s for many years, the all-you –can- eat bar. The bar features barbecue, and barbecued chicken, rice and hash as well as vegetables, including green and barbecue beans, slaw, potato salad with new potatoes, and that mainstay of menus in South Carolina barbecue joints, sweet potato crunch.
I dove in. It wasn’t pretty. From the first bite I fell into in a self imposed feeding frenzy spurred on by brain chemicals triggered by the deadly combination of sugar fat and salt that, according to Dr. David Kessler’s new book The End of Over-Eating has led to the obesity epidemic in America.
The barbecue was tender and succulent with good smoke and a slightly sweet finish. They had a variety of home made sauces to choose from. The hot sauce, a light tomato mixture, had just the right amount of sting. By the time I got to the sweet potato crunch, the thought of remaining ambulatory had shrunk to the deeper recesses of my pork-poisoned brain.
Hash, made from what Anthony Bourdain might call the “nasty bits” -ground up chunks of left-over of barbecue- is a rarity in this part of SC; it’s more common below the fall line. Several people in line with me were heard to say; “I’m just not a hash person.” They missed out on a treat.
Since barbecue this good should easily place highly in just about any cook off, I looked around to see if I could spot a trophy, but none were visible. Either the owner doesn’t compete, which, if true, is a loss to the barbecue community, or he stores his trophies elsewhere.
The efficient and attentive wait staff kept our glasses filled the whole time. I left vowing to return and hoping my arteries would some day find it in their heart to forgive me.
Diner rating: 5

Come for the Biscuits, Stay for the Meal

The Moose Cafe is always busy

Visitors to the North Carolina Farmer’s Market at Ashville enjoy walking down the long promenade between stalls filled with fresh produce, sourwood honey, country ham and Amish baked goods. They often visit the huge garden center across the road, and if they are in the know, their visit often includes a stop at Moose Café. The café is almost always crowded, so there is usually a short wait. While hanging out and waiting for a table diners can read the glowing reviews from prestigious magazines such as Southern Living, browse the various Moose-related items, or just chill in one of the ample rocking chairs.
Once their name is called diners are likely to be escorted to a table near the huge windows overlooking the pastoral Biltmore Estate. The menu is sparse, just one page front and back, plus a few daily specials written on a white board near the lobby. Their specialty is home style country cooking of the meat and three variety and the prices are very reasonable. The restaurant is owned by the farmer’s market which is next door, so the food is almost guaranteed to be fresh. Tea and sodas are served in one pint canning jars. Once you place your order the waitress disappears into the kitchen and returns in a few minutes with a plate of hot biscuits. These are no ordinary biscuits. These steaming fist-sized wads of perfectly baked dough are the kind that grandmas all over the South are remembered for. Slathered with butter and baptized with the readily available honey, sorghum or he moose Café’s signature home made apple butter, they bring back memories of Sunday dinners long past; a childhood fondly remembered. The food at Moose Café is simple, appetizing and well done. (It's here I learned by eavesdropping on a watress, that the secret to the great flavor of their pinto beans is a timely addition of a dollop of peanut butter. Try it.) But ask anyone who has visited the place and more often than not, the first thing they will mention is the biscuits. Often their eyes will glaze over and they will get that far away look, as if recalling their first date, their wedding, or a favorite vacation of long ago. Yes, the biscuits are that good.
Diner rating: 5

Judging SCBA

Lake High is a man with a vision and a mission. When the affable, avuncular retired stockbroker teamed up with Walter Rolandi to form the South Carolina Barbecue Association (SCBA) a few years ago, they had one thing in particular in mind: To make South Carolina the acknowledged center of the barbecue world.
“We’re already the unacknowledged center of the barbecue world,” he says, standing at the podium at the SCBA judg’s seminar in Columbia, SC. He ticks off the reasons:
“Barbecue was invented here. We’re the only state that has all four basic barbecue sauces; Vinegar and pepper, mustard, light tomato and heavy tomato. North Carolina has three, as does Georgia.”
High has a big job ahead of him. South Carolina would probably be way down most people’s list of states that make the best barbecue, behind, say, Kansas, Tennessee, and North Carolina. High is out to change that. His strategy is to use his association to both advertise for South Carolina barbecue and to train up a cadre of judges who will serve as a kind of quality control for South Carolina’s “cookers” –he never calls them chefs.
SCBA judges travel to about thirty barbecue cook offs across the state each year to evaluate the product of between a dozen and 100 cookers per event. The average judge will taste eight samples of barbecue per event. He needs a lot of judges.
“We’ve found that about 12 samples is all anyone can handle without getting mouth fatigue—you blow out your taste buds,” he says.
There are about fifty people attending the seminar, as well as about ten members of the association, proudly wearing their aprons, which the get once they are “certified”, and their Senior or Master Judge boaters, which they earn by judging at least thirty events as well as serving on a cooking team up to three times, “to get an idea of what the cooks go through,” as well as to give the cooks an idea of how the judging is done.
“Cooks are paranoid”, says Lake. He tells of cooks who accused he judges of recognizing a certain cooks’ plate, or making back room deals, all of which is untrue. This paranoia probably comes from stress and fatigue, as the cookers at your average event have usually been up all night working steadily for 18-24 hours straight, preparing, cooking, and tending their pork, quite often with liberal infusions of their favorite alcoholic beverage.
“One thing I’ve learned from being on a cooking team is that a 1:30 in the morning, the jokes are a lot funnier if you’ve had a few beers under your belt.” he says.
After staying up all night and fretting over, and saucing the pork and tending the fires, the tired, bedraggled, hung over cooker has a twenty minute time window to have his pork plated (on a simple white Styrofoam plate) and taken to the judges, where it disappears inside the judging room and is not heard from again, often for several hours.
What takes place in the judging room could mean a prize of several hundred dollars to one cooking team—and a world of disappointment to many others. SCBA takes this job seriously.
“Judging is easy, scoring is difficult.” Says Rolandi, who looks like he could be former president Bill Clinton’s long lost brother.
At the seminar we go over the three main scoring systems used by other states.
High discusses the good and bad points of each.
The Kansas City system is too snobbish according to High, who reports of an event where a cooker’s sample was summarily disqualified because it wasn’t plated properly.
The Memphis system is too heavily reliant on appearance, with three out of six categories relying on sight vs. taste.
“The only way to tell if barbecue is good or not is with your mouth.” he says.
The North Carolina has no barbecue association, so event promoters end up rounding up whoever is handy to do the judging.
“They may get the local disc jocky, the Mayor’s wife and the town drunk; but some of those town drunks are pretty good judges,” he quips.
The score sheet for North Carolina makes up for the lack of expertise by giving guide lines for how the meat should look and taste, which, according to High, tends to make all the barbecue the same. High wants diversity. He talks of his “first principles”: Get rid of your biases. He asks the group; “How many of you hate mustard sauce?” A few hands go up.
“Bad, bad, bad!” he says. You can’t bring your personal bias into the judge’s tent.” When another participant avers that she thinks she would be a good judge, he asks why.
“Because I think I’d be good at judging the consistency of the sauce.”
“We don’t judge sauce. We judge meat!” He snaps. “If they bring us their meat with a container of sauce we politely hand the sauce back.”
This is a good strategy, as sauce, like memory, can hide a multitude of transgressions.
Working with Walter, who is a doctor, Lake, who has been a certified wine judge
for decades, came up with a scoring system that attempts to make what is admittedly a subjective process as scientific as possible. Samples are judged blindly. Only a number, assigned by the Marshall identifies its owner. SCBA no longer does on-site evaluations, where you go out to the cooker’s rig and sample the meat, as this could lead to bias.
SCBA is the only association that judges aroma, as well as the other standard categories of appearance, taste and tenderness. The SCBA system consists of setting a standard for each category among the samples and judging each successive sample against the standard. That way, instead of comparing eight samples against each other, you are only comparing two samples at a time; the current sample and the standard. The judging is done on a weighted twenty point system with taste and tenderness having the most weight. Judges are encouraged to carry their numbers out to two decimal places, which according to High, virtually eliminates ties; and they can change their ratings, based on their reaction to subsequent samples, unlike the Kansas City standard. In fact High mentioned the Kansas City system so often that the person sitting next to me felt the need to lean over and whisper; “I’m a Kansas City judge. We’re not that bad.”
The average score turns out to be around 14, which may seem high until understand that average cooks don’t go to cook offs.
“Most of these people cook barbecue for a living. If their barbecue wasn’t above average, they’d be out of business.” Says High.
When it’s his turn to talk, Rolandi strides to the podium and relates the three guiding principles of the judging: Fairness, consistency and objectivity. He warns about order effects; the effect on the judging of the (random) order in which the samples are received; and time effects, that occur because the samples toward the end of the line will have cooled off compared to the first samples; and the judges enthusiasm tends to wane
as they begin to get full and their taste buds become exhausted. This is why judges are limited in the number of samples they taste. Husbands and wives aren’t allowed to judge at the same table, as they can pick up subtle cues from each other. Judges are expected to keep a poker face and not talk about their samples, a rule which, according to High is punishable by a gruesome death if violated. Outliers are questioned.
“If everybody else scores the meat 3.7 on tenderness and you score it a 1.53 we’re going to ask you why.”
It may be that you just happened to get a tough piece of meat, or it may be that you need to do some soul searching.
High peppers his remarks with anecdotes from his years working cook offs. There was the guy who handed him a sample that was rotten, the guy who set his pig on fire—and ended up winning first place, the sample that was so spicy it severely hampered the judges ability to taste the subsequent samples, the time a team passed out drunk and slept through the judging, and the time they were short on judges and he and Walter had to evaluate 22 samples each.
“We survived, though,” he says.
Before judges become certified, they must attend the seminar and also work four events where they sit at a “newbies” table and are allowed to judge the meat, but their scores aren’t used.
“We don’t want you to do any damage.” Says Walter.
Newbies are shepherded by an experienced judge and are allowed to discuss among themselves how they came to their conclusions about the samples. By the time they are certified, they will have tasted upwards of 32 different samples of barbecue, and hopefully honed their palettes.
Along with putting South Carolina barbecue on the map, all of this thought and preparation goes into the SCBA’s judging system in order to fulfill the second part of Lake High’s vision.
“We want you to have fun!” he says.

YOU CAN ALMOST BREATHE THE CHOLESTEROL

Blue Ridge Barbecue Festival
Harmon Field, Tryon, NC


Each year around mid June Barbecue aficionados from all over the south and points beyond converge on the little town of Tryon, NC for a festival of music, art and pork. Smoke and music fill the air in equal parts. You can almost breathe the cholesterol. At one end of the park is the stage where local blues, rock and folk acts ply their trade to a willing and somewhat lubricated audience. Under the shade trees at the back, artists and artisans line up their stalls and hawk their wares from the arcane to the sublime. In between, food stalls line the field where you can choose from several award winning purveyors of pork, beef and chicken in eastern, southern or western styles, or sample several if your arteries are up to it.

The barbecue is good, as one would expect. I’ve never been disappointed. But the treat for me is touring the competition area on Friday night, where well cooks imbibe their beverages of choice and tend their grills in preparation for the judging. Each team has its own recipe, of course, but their creativity is not confined to their food. Their tents and trailers are decorated in styles ranging from tacky to hilarious. The last time I went (2008). There were “The Silence of the Hams” complete with a rip-off banner from the old Jodie Foster movie, “Butts and Breasts,” “Pigs in Paris” with a mock up of the Eiffel Tower, “Sue E. Pigg”(“Cooking everything from butts to guts.”) and my personal favorite, the guys from “Buttrub.com.” As a rule, the men tend the smokers, the women chat and organize, and the children play games in a placid family atmosphere reminiscent of my childhood days of camping with family and friends.

It’s a fun and lively couple of days. The festival is only open on Friday and Saturday. On Sunday everyone packs up and heads for the next festival, and Tryon goes back to being a sleepy and picturesque little mountain town for another year. The 2010 festival is tentatively set for June 11-12. Barbecue lovers mark your calendars.

Diner rating: 5

I DON'T KNOW WHAT THEY DO TO THE GRITS, BUT I WISH THEY'D TELL ME

The Boathouse
101 Palm Boulevard
Isle of Palms, SC
843-886-8000

The Boathouse stands at Breech Inlet

I was torn between the (tilapia) fish tacos and the shrimp and grits. The waiter inquired as to whether I enjoy spicy food. When I responded in the affirmative, he suggested the ($12.00) shrimp plate. I’m glad I took his advice. I seldom pass up this plate when it’s listed on a menu, but I doubt I’ll find a better sample of this old standby, which rivals she crab soup as the signature coastal South Carolina dish. The substantial serving contained slivers of fiery andouille and a rainbow of sautéed peppers with red onions, and plenty of succulent shrimp. The mixture is double sauced with a hearty brown sauce and a lighter, buttermilk based sauce on the top.

But it’s the grits that make this meal stand out. In most shrimp and grits plates the grits are slopped on the plate almost as an after thought. Often they are bland and soupy, relying on the rest of the dish for support. Not the Boathouse grits. These grits are buttery, light and fluffy, they refuse to lay down on the plate but pile themselves around the edges; a substantial scaffold for the rest of the dish. I’ve never had grits like these, and I don’t know their secret, but I wish I did.

The restaurant is on a spit of land only a few hundred yards wide on the edge of the breach inlet, where God decided one day that there needed to be another opening to the sea between South Carolina’s barrier Islands; and from where the Confederate submarine H. L. Hunley left on its heroic and fateful voyage in 1864, to give what for to the USS Housatonic during the War of Northern aggression. Both vessels ended up on the bottom of the sea with a loss of good sailors (Yankees 5, Rebels, 9), yet another Pyrrhic victory for the Cause.
Behind the Boathouse restaurant is an actual boat house where boats can be rented. You can watch the boaters come and go on the Intra Coastal Waterway while sitting on the restaurant’s screened porch enjoying your beverage of choice. I was there for Sunday brunch, but they say at supper one can enjoy a fantastic view of the Carolina sunset. I hope some day I get to see it for myself.

Diner rating: 5

THE PLACE DESERVES A CLIENTLE

Station 22
2205 Middle Street.
Sullivan’s Island, SC
843-883-3355

An employee solicits customers outside Station 22

The pub across the street was packed on this Sunday noon as we squeezed into a parking space on the cramped and diminutive main drag at Sullivan’s Island, but crowds don’t always equal good food, so we opted for this place across the street. Perhaps because the building is being renovated and it was hard to tell if it was open (more about that later) the place was nearly deserted. Soulful sounds of an alto saxophone greeted us as we walked in the door played by an actual live musician who never took a break while we were in there. He played old standards (Misty, Stardust as well as more recent melodies like Wind Beneath my Wings.) accompanied by canned orchestra music. The place is nicely appointed with bead board wainscoting and an interesting ceiling made I think, to mimic a boardwalk Dozens of pictures line the walls including a blown up color photo of the island taken from about 10,000 feet. I had Shrimp and Grits ($12.00.) My partner had the chicken salad croissant with sweet potato fries. ($9.00). Both were very good. Shrimp and grits is a favorite of mine and I hate it when restaurants skimp on the shrimp, but I kept finding the succulent little crustaceans buried in the grits. I was slightly taken aback to see that the andouille sausage that usually accompanies the shrimp had been replaced with country ham, but the pork was julienned and tender and added a good flavor, if not heat, to the plate.

Perhaps because it was Sunday brunch the appetizer was not bread, but pound cake, store bought from the looks of it, and it would have been nice to have some bread to soak up the creamy sauce. The chicken salad had a strange but pleasant almost soapy flavor that I could not place. We had rushed in to get ahead of the church crowd but almost no one was there. Only a few tables were occupied, including a ladies day out group over by the Roman shades featuring a mother and daughter arguing about the propriety of having mimosas with their brunch.

I hope they get there remodeling finished soon. The place deserves a clientele. When we left one of the staff was standing on the steps holding up a sign that said “Open.” It seemed to be a sign of desperation.

Diner rating: 4

HIDDEN IN PLAIN SIGHT

Rockaway Athletic Club
2719 Rosewood Dr.
Columbia, SC
(803) 259-1075

The nondescript Rockaway Athletic Club hides out in the open

Rockaway athletic club is hidden in plain sight in Columbia’s Rosewood district. The plain brick building has no signage all. Neither does it have a Website. It seems to have sustained a loyal customer base on word of mouth alone. It sits at the corner of Rosewood and Holloway in a nondescript building that must at one time have been a manufacturing plant of some kind. It’s easy to miss, as I did the first two times I went looking for it. (Hint: There’s a Karate school across the street.). I went there, apparently like most customers; because an acquaintance told me that they had a great pimiento cheeseburger, which is a favorite of mine. The small parking lot at the rear was about half full, as was the restaurant itself on this early Friday night. There is a back porch that sits about thirty with the de rigueur big screen TV tuned to ESPN’s Sports Center. Inside is a warren with at least two bars and several dining rooms. The furniture was eclectic with a cigar store Indian, a framed French cartoon, reminders of Saint Patty’s Day, Cinquo de Mayo, and Oktoberfest—the beer drinker’s holidays. In one corner, below a canoe hanging from the ceiling was a framed “quilt” of t-shirts the place had commissioned commemorating various festivals going back at least ten years, a paean the joint’s staying power. A huge map of South Carolina took up a whole wall near the door.

We found a table in a side room with a TV tuned to that salvation of insomniacs, the Golf channel. Above our table was a reproduction of a photo of Samuel Clemmons. The only hint of athleticism, other than the TV’s and the high and dry canoe was a pool table in the middle of our dining room that had service ware stacked on its vinyl covering. The waitress claimed that the place had “just about any brand of beer you want.” I couldn’t think of the brand name I wanted to test her with (Yeungling), and ordered a Coors Light in frustration.

The pimiento cheeseburger was very good; thick, juicy, well done and crumbly around the edges-signifying a hand tossed patty. The pimiento cheese was creamy, with a goodly amount of pepper chunks. The pimiento cheese fries, however, were a disappointment, though it was no fault of the restaurant; pimiento cheese just doesn’t belong on fries. It was a gamble that didn’t pay off. The prices are reasonable. It’s not a bad place to spend a few bucks on victuals—once you find it.

Diner rating: 4

THE REASON YOU GO TO AN ALE HOUSE IS FOR THE ALE

Hunter Gatherer Ale House and Pub
900 Main Street
Columbia SC
803-748-0540

Heavy shades block the afternoon sun from the large windows at the Hunter-Gatherer Alehouse

This restaurant is in a building that used to be an electric repair shop. Perhaps that explains the old lighting fixtures that were obviously recycled from a church sanctuary. The building is in need of a paint job on the outside. Much of the signage has been weathered away, so that at first glance one might mistake it for a derelict. The inside is not much better with bare brick walls and floor joists visible in the ceiling. The tables and chairs are a hodge-podge of flea market retreads. Featured prominently are the huge stainless steel kettles where they make the beer, accompanied by a maze of pipes and tubes that would make an oil refinery green with envy.

On the Friday night we were there, the place was packed, perhaps in part due to its recent spotlighting by Michael Feldman on his “Wha’d Ya Know?” show on public radio when he visited the city a few days earlier.

There was a sign that said “please seat yourself” but because of the layout of the place, with tables tucked away in dark and secluded areas, it was difficult to see all the tables, much less identify any empty ones. There were other people standing around drinking beer and I didn’t know if they were waiting as well or just passing time, so when I finally spotted the waitress wiping off a table in the back corner of the balcony I grabbed my wife and made a bee line for the spot, squeezing between the closely spaced tables on the ground floor with a flurry of ‘scuse me’s” and “pardon me’s’ until I made it to the back stairs.
The table was next to the pop off valve of one of the kettles making it difficult to concentrate on the menu, but I had a good view of the stuffed coyote over the door. The menu had more or less standard fare of pizza, sandwiches, some steaks and the perfunctory Penne Pasta. The prices were moderate and met my two for twenty rule, meaning that two people could eat for twenty dollars or less(minus drinks). I had the Penne, my wife indulged her pizza fetish. The penne came with a “marinara sauce”, which reminded me of a can of Hunts tomatoes with Italian seasoning but it had a pile of fresh parmesan on top. My wife’s pizza was smallish and a little soggy, but the Asiago cheese gave it a nice bite.

But the reason you go to an ale house is for the ale. I tried the stout, which I had heard good things about. The beer was smooth and not too hoppy. It had good authority and the nutty flavor was true to the bottom of the glass.

Diner rating 4