Cue 2 - Son of Cue

[kickaha]

ginkgo found another BBQ joint up here, and we went tonight - interesting place, Jimmy Lee's BBQ in White Plains. Jimmy Lee Thorpe is a golfer of some note from Roxboro, NC, and he's the main investor and supplied the family recipes.

The hushpuppies were kinda bland (as in, not spiced, plain corn meal), but well cooked, and the 'sweet tea' was just sweetened iced tea - I think it was instant Nestea (with lemon) to be honest.

The rest however, was really very good - the cornbread was *very* sweet, almost like a corn *cake*, with a fine-meal *silky* texture, really very much like a fine cake. This kind of bothered me, until ginkgo nailed it - it had pureed sweet corn in it, and they had used very finely ground corn meal. The two together ended up as something very much like a corn pound cake. Surprisingly good.

ginkgo's braised greens were also sweet, which really threw her until I pointed out it was molasses. :) Most greens I've had in NC have been cooked with vinegar to help break down the woody stems (kale, collards, etc), but these were really nicely done in a completely different way.

And then there was the meat. Wow. Coarse pulled, well smoked without being *smoky*, ever so mildly spiced, not a speck of fat to be seen (but it wasn't dry), and omg melt like butter tender. Honestly, I prefer finely pulled or even chopped, but this was *so* tender that it was heavenly. The sauces they had were a bit odd, a down-east mustard sauce that I really rather liked - it was very close to those I've had on the coast; a sweet/spicy peach sauce that was *surprisingly* good - they use pickled peaches as the base, and then spice it up; a 'Carolina Original' that was pretty much a Western NC mild-smoke, tomato-base - decent, but not my thang; and a 'Carolina Heat' which was the one truly spicy one of the bunch. They talked it up good, but it needed *more* heat for my taste - we asked for some Texas Pete, and got Frank's Red Hot instead, but it was close enough. But dammit, it *needed more vinegar*! I'm used to a vinegar base with spice added, not a thick pasty sauce with only a touch of vinegar to be found. Really though, if this had been cut with about 1/4 cider vinegar and it would have been *fantastic*. As it was, I glopped on the Heat and the Frank's until the plate ran with red, and it was wonderful.

Just one complete miss on their part there - no banana pudding on the menu at *ALL*. WTF?

Tain't no Allen & Sons, that's for sure.