BBQ: Then and Now

Helen Rogers sits on her front porch looking out over the street she has lived on for nearly a century. She squints her narrow eyes at me with a sly smile, resting comfortably in a rocking chair with a pink velvet suit on. "I don't like barbecue anymore," she tells me. Her affliction has struck many Lexingtonians, whose parents and fellow towns people sufeit their appetite for the pig often before they've reached adulthood. But Helen is still proud of barbecue's heritage. She looks comtemplative as I ask her when she first ate chopped pork. "Well I was just a little bitty thing," she begins, "and right up the street there were two men who dug a big pit in the ground and put a few pigs down there. We ate all day long."

The men she described, Lexington BBQ's pioneers, were Jessie Swicegood and Sid Weaver. These men would wake up early and gather hickory wood from the Lexington forest. They would slow-cook pig shoulders, the cut of choice, for many hours. They would then cover the meat in a tomato-based source mixed with vinegar and spices, affectionately called "dip." The aromas would fill the city and people would flock to get lunch from tent establishments around the city. The event was cultural and social as well as culinary. "Every Saturday Mom and sis and me would go down to the tent, point at the cut we wanted, and they'd prepare it specail for us right there," Rogers recalls.

Barbecue in Lexington has not changed all that much over the past 100 years. The biggest change is that many establishments now use gas cookers instead of the open-pit system, which they argue is less clean than newer methods. Cecil Conrad, owner of the Barbecue Center, a Lexington institution, argues for open pit cooking, saying that it is the best and truest way of cooking barbecue. Though controversial, the main methods and taste of Lexington barbecue remain the same.

In the past 25 years, local barbecue and the pig icon has flourished beyond most people's wildest dreams. Lexington's culinary claim-to-fame has been served to foreign dignitaries as as example of true "American" food. This explosion of culture has resulted in large part from the city's marketing. Around 25 years ago the city saw two of its three main claims to fame move overseas. "We had furniture, textiles, and barbecue, and now we only have barbecue left," Cecil Conrad describes. With the hard hit to Lexington's economy, the city looked to barbecue for survival. The city inaugurated the first annual barbecue festival, which last year drew more than 100,000 visitors.

With those crowds and the fame, Lexington has become a cultural tourist attraction. In this Disney World of pigs, the swine icon permeates the metropolis. At Speedy's barbecue a roller-skating pig greets customers as they drive up on route 8. A pink pig balloon sits in the front door, next to a t-shirt counter with slogans like "Go Hog Wild." You sit down and on the menu you see a waitress pig who smiles at famished patrons. A waitress brings a pitcher of sweet tea and asks to take your order. You scan the menu, order the barbecue sandwich, and tell her not to add bacon, an $1.50 option for the most die-hard pig lovers. There is nothing fancy about any of these restaurants, but be assured the pig is king.