True 'Cue, Ocracoke-Style
Readers of my sporadic contributions to the Current might have observed that I’m often inclined to stray from my normal subject – boats – and wander off in search of some good barbecue. In my last piece I managed to dispatch two birds with one stone by sailing a boat over to Pamlico County and eating barbecue there.
Well, it now turns out I don’t have to venture from these shores at all to enjoy a taste of genuine, certified “True ‘Cue.” Over the winter Ocracoke’s very own Ocracoke Oyster Company, owned by George and Janille Turner, was examined by the North Carolina Campaign for Real Barbecue and found to be in compliance with their seven requirements for certification. According to the organization’s website:
To qualify for True ‘Cue NC certification, a restaurant must meet the following criteria:
- Be located in North Carolina.
- Cook the barbecue using wood coals or charcoal as the sole heat source.
- Avoid electricity, gas or any other non-wood heat source for the barbecue other than to ignite the wood, to keep the finished barbecue warm, or to re-heat the finished barbecue.
- Serve the barbecue on site at the location where it is cooked (exceptions may exist for food trucks and other mobile purveyors, but a restaurant that serves barbecue cooked by another business does not qualify).
- Offer regular business hours, with barbecue available on the menu regularly (at least monthly).
- Serve chopped or pulled pork shoulder, Boston butt, hams, or whole hog on the regular menu. Offering additional meats is acceptable -- and irrelevant.
- Provide a sauce or dip that is regionally appropriate.
The True ‘Cue certification was bestowed on the Oyster Company by Brownie Futrell, a longtime Ocracoke homeowner who volunteers as a BBQ judge for True 'Cue.
"I've been a certified barbecue judge for ten years with four different organizations," Brownie told me. He gets to travel to BBQ competitions all over, mostly in North Carolina.
"I was aware of the guys who started True 'Cue. One of them is John Shelton Reed, who wrote the definitive book on North Carolina barbecue," he said. "They were looking for volunteers to judge for True 'Cue, and there was nobody from Downeast on the site, so I was happy to help."
Brownie has certified four True 'Cue joints: one in Hertford, two in Southport, Martelle’s Feed House in Englehard and the Oyster Company on Ocracoke.
"Restaurants that cook with hardwood and coals are a dying institution – it's so labor-intensive – True 'Cue helps preserve and spotlight this part of the culture," he said. "Barbecue-judging is a hobby for me, I enjoy being a part of BBQ culture, and I meet a lot of nice people." Including, of course, George and Janille.
The Oyster Company’s owners are both from out of state, and knew nothing about barbecue when they met on Ocracoke in 1997. They had both had considerable restaurant experience (mostly seafood) when they decided to set up shop on the island.
In 2012, when they were buying restaurant equipment from Mojo Bones, a barbecue restaurant in Tidewater, Virginia, the Turners were given a smoker.
“George burned up a lot of pork butts and beef briskets while he was learning,” Janille said. He kept experimenting with the smoker until he got it right. In the process, he also tried a variety of woods instead sticking to the traditional hickory and oak.
When friends on Ocracoke began supplying him with fig wood, George came up with what has to be the world’s first fig-smoked barbecue. In the spirit of proper journalistic research, I stopped in last week for lunch and had a fig-smoked barbecue sandwich. Hey, tough duty but somebody has to do it! Needless to say, it was delicious: tender wood-fired pork butt and the fig wood gave it a definite Ocracoke signature. I was impressed!
George smokes his pork barbeque with fig (most of it locally-sourced; Janille picked up our trimmings after we cut our fig tree back last fall), his brisket with cherry and fig, and ribs with apple, cherry, and fig. Fruity and delicious!
The Oyster just got a new smoker that holds 1500 pounds, and they built a pit shack out in back of the restaurant. With this capacity, George plans to vacuum seal and freeze his barbeque, so you can take some home with you, or he can ship it anywhere. He and Janille are also working on bottling their sauces, and packaging George’s rub. Don’t ask for the recipes – they’re secrets!
"The Oyster Company is only Ocracoke restaurant that really has BBQ," Brownie said. "Even though they also serve oysters and seafood, they go to the trouble to make BBQ the old-fashioned way. And the fig wood makes it unique to Ocracoke."
"We are focusing on BBQ now, seafood and BBQ, they click together for people, it gives them options," Janille said.
Unlike some of the better-known Tarheel pitmasters, George isn't descended from generations of pig cookers. Yet he came into the barbecue business with a knowledge and appreciation of the sacred traditions along with an awareness that he needed to figure out what would work best for him.
Since barbecue is not the sole focus of the restaurant, the whole-hog approach generally taken by most establishments in the eastern half of the state would not have been practical. So George elected to use only pork butts but prepared them in the East Carolina tradition of vinegar and pepper, wood rather than electricity or gas, and eschewed the red stuff (except as an optional sauce on the table).
Most barbecue lovers of my generation (did I mention that I was born in Rocky Mount during WWII?) expect barbecue to be either “eastern style” (i.e., everything but the squeal, vinegar, pepper and no tomato sauce) or “Lexington” (i.e., exclusively pork shoulder with ketchup in the sauce). Okay, I’m partial to the former. Can’t help it; it’s in my genes. But I’ll admit that the latter style is a damn site better than no barbecue a-tall and it does have the advantage of having less fat, gristle, eye-balls and “oh my God what’s that!?”
I salute George and Janille as members of a new generation who, unencumbered by ironclad tradition, are carefully working to carry North Carolina barbecue into the future. Hell, they’ve even got a mustard sauce on the table that they’re planning to bottle up and retail. Many of my contemporaries would say that mustard sauce is what’s mainly so objectionable about what South Carolinians think of as “barbecue.” I have to admit I tried some and it wasn't bad. In fact, Janille says Brownie loves her mustard sauce, and you know you can take his word for it! (And did I mention he's running for office? Brownie is the Democratic challenger to NC Senator Bill Cook. You can't be a politician in North Carolina without knowing your barbecue!)
Soon after trying the certified True 'Cue, I went back to the Oyster Company for dinner with a visiting friend. We started with the oyster sampler for an appetizer and I followed up with the fried oyster entrée. I just have to say that I've eaten oysters far and wide for many years (even went clear around the world once) but I've never tasted better than what George served up that evening. I know there are other options on the Oyster Company menu, but with oysters and 'cue, who needs anything else?
Martin Garrish & Friends play at Ocracoke Oyster Company on Saturday nights, starting at 6pm. The Oyster hosts live music and karaoke throughout the summer.
