BELLWETHER BBQ
North Carolina restaurant ignores state tradition for social change,
DURHAM, N.C.— Picnic is but a mere restaurant, fingers crossed it’s a bellwether for social change, too.
Read the signs, starting with the discreet yet emphatic “no guns” notice at the entrance.
“Johnny Cash says: ‘Don’t bring your guns to town son. Leave your guns at home.’ ”
There’s an even better sign at the loo.
“All-gender restroom,” it proclaims with a rudimentary black-and-white sketch of a toilet instead of a woman in a skirt or a man in pants.
North Carolina, you see, is an opencarry state, which means diners could have guns in their purses or hip holster. It’s also the state that’s getting battered for passing an antiLGBT bathroom law.
There are politicians, please remember, and then there are the people who will restore your faith in humankind. When you travel, you’ll meet many of the good guys when you eat and drink.
Barbecue is North Carolina’s state cuisine and Picnic serves “next-generation ’cue” in the form of pulled pork (don’t come here looking for ribs or brisket).
This is whole-hog barbecue from heritage pigs raised on pasture at Green Button Farm and then woodsmoked by “barbecue man” Wyatt Dickson for upwards of 22 hours.
Order a pulled pork plate with slaw, hush puppies and two sides. I recommend bacon-braised collards and creamy mac and cheese.
You will likely see Dickson at work in the open kitchen, pulling the pork he cooked out back in a massive smoker with natural wood charcoal. You might convince him to chit-chat, about the restaurant, the food, the signs, the state of his state.
Picnic just opened in February, the creation of Dickson (an ex-law man), chef Ben Adams (an ex-finance man) and Green Button Farm owner Ryan Butler (who creates “food with an address, not a barcode”).
Get the pimento cheese with crackers, devilled eggs and fried chicken sandwich. There’s blackened catfish and green tomato carpaccio if you swing those ways.
Drink a Fullsteam Coffee is for Closers plow-to-pint beer, Smoke House cocktail, farmer’s sweet potato shrub (look it up) or can of Cheerwine.
The pork comes from what Dickson proudly calls “real pigs” that “lead real pig lives.”
He will tell you that “the product out there standing as North Carolina barbecue isn’t always our best, to put it mildly.”
Fighting words, clearly, but I don’t know enough to agree or disagree. I do know Durham is starting to have a moment and it might be my home if I was American.
When Dickson says “there’s a little sort of rough, scrappy edge that Durham is proud of,” he could also be describing himself.
House Bill 2 (a.k.a. HB2, a.k.a. “the bathroom law”) exploded out of nowhere in March. Dickson promptly ordered new bathroom signage showing Picnic’s disdain for the state government edict that people must go to washrooms that match the gender on their birth certificate.
Thing is, the law only applies to public buildings and schools, not private businesses.
North Carolina, he says, has a “proud tradition of being a progressive Southern state,” and HB2 is not a true reflection of it.
Gun laws are always a touchy subject, but let’s go there. Canadians probably don’t realize how many U.S. states allow the open carrying of handguns and long guns (hint: more than half ).
Dickson isn’t into guns, but has been around them all his life and is fine with them being a “tool for activity.”
Having them in Picnic makes him uncomfortable, so he uses a Johnny Cash song to cajole people into leaving their guns at home.
“It makes it very hard for people who are carrying to disagree, because Johnny said it,” he acknowledges.
The only guns Dickson likes are the figurative ones that litter his speech in sentences such as, “You have to do your own thing and you have to stick to your own guns a little bit.”
He doesn’t let people call him a pitmaster because he feels it’s pretentious. He also doesn’t like the negative connotation the word “master” has in a diverse city such as Durham.
Dickson brings me to tears with a story about a woman who called the restaurant a few months ago asking “do you accept blacks?” before coming for dinner with her friends.
“Black folks, white folks, rich folks, poor folks,” Dickson says. “There’s always of diversity of people — and all people love barbecue.” Jennifer Bain was hosted by Visit North Carolina and its partners, which didn’t review or approve this story.