LEXINGTON, NC:
THE HEART OF
CAROLINA ’CUE
COUNTRY
For North Carolinians, barbecue is a sacred
culinary tradition. It means more than meat
over coals. Carolina barbecue is pork cooked
low and slow over hardwood embers often
made from hickory and oak. Styles vary geo-
graphically. In Eastern North Carolina, barbe-
cue means pork from the whole hog doused
in a vinegar-based sauce with a peppery kick.
In the Piedmont, barbecue is often called Lex-
ington style.
Here in the center of the state, pit masters
cook pork shoulders and serve the meat with
a thin ketchup-and-vinegar sauce often re-
ferred to as dip. Distinctive red slaw, with
ketchup and vinegar replacing the mayon-
naise, is the requisite side.
Lexington, located on a triangle-shaped piece
of land in the middle of Interstate 85 and High-
ways 64 and 52, draws travelers from hours
away to eat its signature barbecue. Davidson
County, of which Lexington is the county seat,
has 15 barbecue joints, and six operate within
Lexington.
Lexington barbecue traces its beginnings to a
local farmer named Sid Weaver. In 1916, he
began coming to town on “court days,” cook-
ing barbecue and selling it when court re-
cessed for lunch.
The first brick-and-mortar pits were built in the
1930s across from the courthouse. As the result
of a happy accident, visitors can see those pits
today. When workers renovated City Hall in
2015, they uncovered the historic pits behind
a closet and preserved them.