College Barbecue, Salisbury, North Carolina

After my second lunch at Jimmy’s, for my third and last barbecue meal of the first day of our trip to Blowing Rock, I headed to College Barbecue at 117 Statesville Boulevard in Salisbury.

College Barbecue opened as a drive-in in 1965. While their days of car hops are long past, the period architecture remains, and it retains its core feature, a wood fired barbecue pit.

That pit and the joy it brings are what drew me back. On my first visit to College Barbecue, which I detailed here, I arrived at 10:00 a.m. while everyone else was eating breakfast. I sat on a counter stool and asked if they’d started serving barbecue yet. The server turned around and asked, and I heard, “Sure.” The next sound I heard was a cleaver chopping pork, and I fell in love. After my first bite, College had earned a spot on my 2023 Ten Best Piedmont Style Barbecue list.

On this trip, I drove over from Jimmy’s. It was a short drive, only a little longer than the drive between Jimmy’s and my first lunch at Backcountry. Nancy is a one-lunch-per-day person and decided to wait in the car, so when I went in I just ordered a pork sandwich to go. Although we were pretty deep into the afternoon, the place was jammed, as it always seems to be.

Soon I heard the sound of a cleaver chopping pork, and my heart sang. It’s Our Song. In minutes I was walking back to the car with a surprisingly heavy sandwich.

I ate it in the car, sitting on our new car seats, so there was some tension, as if it were the sandwich of Damocles. I managed the delicate act of opening the sandwich and photographing the interior without incident.

It’s important for you to see the red slaw. I’m a fan of red slaw. I know that slaw is a heated point of contention within North Carolina, and I suppose I should say that I also love white slaw and yellow slaw. North Carolina is a great state for slaw, and it all goes well with the local barbecue. Red slaw, for those unfamiliar with it, is basically finely chopped cabbage tossed with Lexington-style barbecue sauce (vinegar, pepper, and ketchup). It sits beautifully on a barbecue sandwich and adds a nice crunch and some additional tang to balance the richness of the pork.

Here’s a side view.

That was a delicious sandwich. Pit-cooked pork is hard to beat, and this was graced with excellent smoke. A day or two later, the Godfather, John Shelton Reed, stopped at College for some barbecue on his way back from the mountains. (He took that picture of the pit.) The pitmaster told John that they cook with hickory “although I won’t say a little oak doesn’t slip in sometimes.” I know that folks in Eastern North Carolina get sensational results with oak, but I was raised on hickory and it holds a special place in my heart. Or stomach.

Definitely make it a point to try the barbecue at College. Listen for the beautiful music of a cleaver chopping pork, and savor the aroma of hickory cooked over hickory coals.

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