Kathleen Purvis on BBQ, Food Journalism and Charlotte’s Food Scene

[00:00:02] What you want, when you want it, where you want it. This is The MESH Carolina Barbecue Festival 2026 was the biggest and best yet. That's thanks to our sponsor partners, our pitmasters and everyone who attended. You raise money for Operation Barbecue Relief while celebrating the diverse blend of barbecue flavors that make up Charlotte and the Carolinas.

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[00:01:16] Few people know the food and culture flavors of the Carolinas like our guest today. Kathleen Purvis is a long-time food journalist based in Charlotte. She was always one of my favorite reads in the Charlotte Observer where she spent many years. And since then, you've seen her work in Our State and Charlotte Magazine. She's written three books. And today, she's part of the team in the Charlotte Bureau of the Food Section, a subscriber-supported publication that serves food journalism to eaters across the American South. Kathleen,

[00:01:45] Welcome to the Low & Slow Barbecue Show. Hey, thanks, Sugar. Barbecue is one of my favorite subjects. Oh, wonderful. Then let's draw the battle lines right out of the gate. Memorial Day is almost here. It's time to think about your ideal barbecue plate. Let's set the Carolina burgers and slawdolls aside. We approve of those on Memorial Day. But today is barbecue. What is on your ideal barbecue plate? Meat, sides, whatever. What's on it?

[00:02:12] I have to say that I am nonpartisan when it comes to barbecue. So I'm a little more accepting of other states' traditions. So the perfect plate would be chopped pork, slow-cooked, you know, good old North Carolina, Eastern North Carolina style. Plus, I would appreciate some ribs, spare ribs, please. No baby. And I've become very partial to brisket. Hard to beat good brisket. Yeah, yeah, that's for sure.

[00:02:42] I want coleslaw and a little bit of baked beans and I'm a happy girl. Oh, boy, that sounds like a perfect Memorial Day barbecue plate. Any other Memorial Day traditions that you like to enjoy each year? You know, truthfully, I don't generally do barbecue on Memorial Day. Historically, barbecue in this part of the world was always a fall thing. It was cold enough to be able to safely slaughter a pig. Plus, a lot of times you did it to celebrate the end of your harvest, a successful harvest.

[00:03:12] Sure. So I associate Memorial Day more with steaks on the grill and, you know, what's in it, the farmer's market by that time. Yeah, those first summer vegetables, the early corn and all the good fresh produce. Absolutely. I've been digging on asparagus and sugar snap peas for weeks now. That's just, that's been basically 90% of my diet has been asparagus. Wonderful. And all those lettuces and spinaches and all that good stuff is coming out this time of year in the garden, too.

[00:03:42] We're still in here. And yeah, it's hard not to be happy this time of year. Yeah, so that's a great segue into the food section. Let's talk about it. In your new Charlotte Bureau, we had publisher Hannah Raskin on during a 4th of July episode just as she was getting the foodsection.com launched. And I know you guys have come a long way since then, so maybe catch us up to speed on the Charlotte Bureau and how it has come out of the food section.

[00:04:09] Yeah, that one came about very quickly. So I did, I'm a freelancer now. I left for business right before the pandemic. They offered us a buyout and I took it. And now I freelance. And I was one of my regular biggest clients in freelancing with Charlotte Magazine, which I wrote for, but I also did, you know, fact checking, copy editing, that kind of stuff for them.

[00:04:34] Had a great time with their two main editors, Greg LaCour, who used to work for The Observer, and Taylor Bowling. And their owner pulled the plug on the publication really quickly, literally. Like, we were planning, we were in a story planning conversation at 10 o'clock on a Friday morning and at 4.30 that afternoon, they called me and said, pull the plug. They're shutting us down. It was that fast. Yeah.

[00:05:03] And so we were all trying to figure out, okay, what do we want to do? What do we want to pivot to do? They had, here we were, the three of us, with a lot of knowledge of Charlotte, a lot of enthusiasm for journalism. And so we started a conversation about, okay, what does this market really need?

[00:05:21] And one of the things we really felt like wasn't being answered here was that very ethical journalism-based coverage of food, including restaurant reviews, which too many of them are being done by people who are paid to write about restaurants. And that's by the restaurant themselves, and that kind of bothered us as journalists.

[00:05:47] So we were trying to figure out how can we start a newsletter that would be something all three of us could enjoy and use to, you know, keep our careers going a bit. And I suggested to them, you know, you ought to call Hannah, because Hannah and I have been good friends and colleagues for a long, long time. We were both officers, president and vice president of the old Association of Food Journalists. And I said, you know, she's built this very cool thing over at the food section. We've got to go ask her advice. And Hannah's immediate advice was, why would you want to start a newsletter?

[00:06:17] I already built one. So she's been, for the last year or so, she's been building bureaus in certain areas of the South because she can't be everywhere herself. And so she said, you know, I really want a bureau in Charlotte. There's so much going on in Charlotte. It's become a really happening food scene here. So she said, why don't we talk about you guys working with me to do that? And we were sort of had never occurred to us.

[00:06:46] But within a few weeks, we got it up and running very, very quickly. And now we are the Charlotte Bureau of the food section. Yeah. And you mentioned those other towns. There's one for Asheville, Atlanta, Charlotte, Nashville. Yeah. And one for West Virginia, all listed at thefoodsection.com. Plus, yeah, Michael Stern, you know, from the old road food couple back when they were Jane and Michael Stern a million years ago.

[00:07:12] They were the first ones to write sort of travel food guides in America. And so Michael is one of their regulars, too. Yeah. Huge, huge bullpen of great talent at thefoodsection.com. So, you know, you mentioned some of those things about the paid restaurant reviews. There's Google reviews out in the world. Now there's a lot of clickbait, aggregators, AIs coming down the pipe with all kinds of that type of stuff.

[00:07:41] Who do you guys feel like your audience is? And how do you get out of that mess of all those things to find the ideal readers? That's a really good question. I feel like our readers are people who take food in Charlotte seriously, who are more interested in knowing the standards that go into reviewing food, reviewing restaurants.

[00:08:10] Those who have been around Charlotte a long time and know it's seen but appreciate people who, you know, I've been covering food here for more than 30 years. I've watched this city change, change in, grow. You know, I mean, it's just, it's amazing. It's delightful to be a part of a community and know it that well.

[00:08:33] And I think community is probably a key here, too, is we have a lot of people who move to Charlotte who want to be a part of this community, who want to understand why food here is different than Charleston or Atlanta or, you know, any of the other southern cities. We're a growing food market here, but there's also a lot of history that people aren't aware of. There's a lot of blue-collar history in Charlotte.

[00:09:04] This used to be a factory town as much as it was a bank town. And those that are Greek communities, you know, people who move here are always really surprised at how Greek the history of our food is, why that is. And I've spent, you know, three decades figuring that out and telling those stories. So I find those are things that people really react to.

[00:09:28] Plus, I get the impression from people who tell me they've subscribed that they're really, they're feeling that lack of journalism with an ethics policy that you can explain and understand. People want that connection again. That's what we're trying to provide them. Yeah, that makes great sense. So you guys launched in March, I guess March 4th was sort of the first newsletter.

[00:09:57] Yeah, it just, it has flown. Yeah, and so many great stories already listed there at the newsletter. How has the response to it been? And I know you've got some that have kind of been, that have hit a hot button out there. We can talk about it if you want, but how has response been to it? It's been great. It's been great. And there are stories that we have shown we are not afraid to tackle. And that's an important thing for us.

[00:10:25] We want people to know that, you know, we're not afraid to say there's a 600-pound gorilla in the room. Right. You know, I mean, we're journalists. That's our background is journalism. And, you know, you get used to people taking dings at you. Yeah. I spent well more than 40 years in newsrooms. And I always say I had to develop a callus on my ear drums. Because if I wrote something people didn't like and didn't agree with, they always let me know.

[00:10:54] And I always tried to let them know, I like that. Please let me know. I hope I do hit you. I had a coworker a long time ago, Fannie Flono, who was a beloved columnist at the Observer. And Fannie's the one who taught me the saying, a hit dog will holler. Yep. When people holler, usually there's something there you ought to be paying attention to. You've hit a nerve for sure. And some of those have hit a nerve. I'll let folks go find it at thefoodsection.com. If they're subscribers.

[00:11:23] And that's an important part of it too, the subscriber piece of it. Or do you feel like you're getting the response that you need in order to continue to sustain into the future? And always use more. Here's the thing that I don't think that people don't realize. I used to think about this a lot when I was in the newsroom. We have freedom of the press in this country. But freedom of the press isn't free. It costs money to do it.

[00:11:46] And so like with restaurant reviews, we really want to be doing independent restaurant reviews. Where the restaurant has nothing to pay us for. We're paying our own way. That's expensive. If you're going to go to the places that people are most interested in, the ones that are new, the ones that people are doing something different and you want to be able to tell that story, it's going to cost you a lot of money.

[00:12:15] And so that is one thing we do have to have money to do what we do. So that's a pitch for, you know, support your, find the journalism outlets you believe in and pay them. Because it's not free. I got to pay my house, my mortgage like everybody else. But I've also got to pay for my meal or you shouldn't trust what I have to say.

[00:12:41] And it drives me crazy when I see places that claim to be doing reviews, but their meal is being paid for or they're doing events with the chefs to publicize what they're doing. Those things are all, to me, conflicts of interest that just go against my, you know, I went to work in a newsroom when I was 17 years old. I really, really believe in journalism ethics.

[00:13:08] Hannah and I worked together with the Association of Food Journalists, which unfortunately is now closed. But we were together in that group for years and years and years. And that group was founded on the basis of food coverage ethics. Because I don't think people realize that there needs to be a standard. There needs to be something that you understand and can actually look at and go, okay, that's how they took care of paying for that.

[00:13:36] And that's something that we really believe strongly in. Yeah. And the folks in the barbecue audience understand it. It's not just the brand new food that's out there that costs all barbecue costs, especially as the, you know, the prices of food continue to rise. And as we kind of get into, you know, those new directions, let's talk a little bit more about the food scene and that food frenzy that's really happening around Charlotte and the Carolinas.

[00:14:00] It's helping to sort of drive interest in publications like you have, but then also in the food scene of the whole market. And we'll start with Hopper Carolinas, Kathleen. I know you've had some involvement there. You know, we're working with the barbecue guys. Tell me a little bit about how you've been plugged into it and maybe your overall reaction to how they portrayed our food scene so far. I will be working on a story about that. Excellent. Yeah.

[00:14:30] And I am currently doing regular weekly, just short updates, you know, as we go along that people can follow along with. I did a bigger story on, I actually was at the taping of the Aeroe Force episode. And if you watch at, I think it's at the 28 minute mark, you can see me for like a nanosecond. There are things that they have done along the way that I've been having a lot of fun poking at.

[00:14:58] Especially the barbecue episode, which I thought was a really good episode overall. They had a group of people there, including Brian Furman from Atlanta and Lou Donalds from here in Charlotte from Sweet Lou's. I mean, lots of good people that I respect there. But they kept using some nomenclature that just was driving me crazy.

[00:15:20] They kept referring to Eastern Carolina barbecue and then Western Carolina barbecue, which to me is not, it's not Eastern and Western. Western makes people think you're talking about the mountains. Uh-huh. And that's not where the opposing style came from. It's Lexington style. Right. Piedmont. Or Piedmont style. I'll interrupt even on. But Western is not, it's not, just because you have an Eastern doesn't mean you have a Western. Right.

[00:15:49] You have an Eastern, which is, you know, a whole hog, no tomato in the sauce, dates back to the flavor underpinnings and the styles there date back to the early English settlers who were mostly on the coast of North Carolina. Mm-hmm. Lexington style, Piedmont style is German in its origin because if you want a history lesson, you know about the Great Wagon Road down from Philadelphia.

[00:16:19] And then it turned and went west to the Cumberland Gap and you could continue to the west that way. A lot of those people were German and a lot of them got as far as this area, the Piedmont area of North Carolina and stopped and stayed here. And so their barbecue style is, you know, shoulder. Also, you know, half of that is the Boston butt, but a real place is going to do shoulder. Their sauce has a little bit of tomato in it because they didn't think tomato was poisonous like the English did.

[00:16:49] And it's very vinegary. And if you look at things like German Sauerbraten, you see that you can see a real descent from that style. Sure. Very German influenced. Mm-hmm. And so that's our, those are our two barbecue styles. And so when people say eastern and western, it's just like, it's like fingernails on a chalkboard. Oh! It's not as important to pick a side as to get it right. The side's right.

[00:17:19] That's exactly right. I mean, when you get it wrong, it's like, you know, you haven't taken the time to learn that history and where this comes from. There's a reason for that. So, yeah, I tend to be kind of a, I'm an old school marm in my heart. That's okay. That's a good nitpick, especially for the barbecue episode on a food television program. You think that would get that stuff right. But, you know, while we're all talking about the food chef, and this isn't new, the food frizziness just didn't happen when the top chef came to town.

[00:17:47] It's been, it's been going for a while. Do you think that this is a peak for us or is it just more rising action to get up to a greater place? We've still got a peak. We're still a long way from the peak here. You know, I got here in 1985, and this was a very different city. It was very mom and pop. It was, as I had mentioned earlier, you know, there's a blue collar underpinning to a lot of Charlotte. There was a lot of manufacturing here.

[00:18:14] Not just textiles, but also things like the Lance Cracker Factory. And, you know, there were a lot of these kinds of places. And so we tended to be a place that had a lot of Greek-owned diners, mom and pops, those kind of, you know, the beaten threes, that kind of thing. Charlotte, for a long, long time, it seemed like the restaurant growth in the high end, the fancy restaurants, were all coming in as high-end steak chains.

[00:18:44] And that's because people came here to do business. And they wanted to be able to go back to the home office and say, hey, that bank in Charlotte really wants our business. They took us to Ruth's Chris or the Capitol Grill or something that someone would recognize. So you didn't see that much of an independent fine dining scene here. That really started to change.

[00:19:07] Early 2000s, mid-2000s, and has totally taken off after the pandemic in the chef-owned restaurants. The restaurants buy people who are from here who are really aiming for a higher level, like the Kindreds, Joe and Katie Kindred, who now have, they've always had Kindred and they had Hello Sailor. Now they've got this amazing place downtown called Albertine. You've got the Tun and Dandel Browns who have supper land.

[00:19:36] Totally different expression than we'd seen in a long time of fine dining. It's in an old church. They aim for a church supper, family meal kind of feel to it, but with very high-end, very realized cuisine.

[00:19:53] You know, we're seeing a lot more of those places that it's just so exciting to me because what we're missing for so long were the chef-owned restaurants and the expressions who, the chefs who have a local tie and an understanding of what this food is. Now we're finally seeing that, and I don't think it's slowing down. It's going to keep going really great. I'm very happy about it, as long as the economy can continue to support it and nobody knows where the economy is going right now.

[00:20:22] There's a couple of economic points in there I want to try to get to, but the first of them maybe is how much do you feel like that that renaissance has been driven by the culinary institutes that are in Charlotte as they've continued to grow and having some of those local chefs creating a restaurant group to build up to something bigger? That is a really good question. I think where we are now probably was pushed along by that scene, but that scene has slowed down.

[00:20:50] You know, at one point we had three culinary schools here. We had Johnson & Wales. We had Central Piedmont Community College, which had a really good culinary program, and we had the Art Institute. Well, now the Art Institute is gone, and we, let me see, Johnson & Wales is still there and still active, but has slowed down a good bit. They've cut their staff, and I'm not hearing nearly as much from them as we were for a while.

[00:21:18] Central Piedmont is still very active, still training a lot of people who maybe want to start their careers in a restaurant but not with $60,000 a year in student debt. They can get really well trained at Central Piedmont. And so, yeah, there are a lot of people around here who came out of those programs. Oscar Peterson of Jimmy Pearls. You've got, you know, Sam Hart was at CPCC.

[00:21:48] We've got, if you look around at who's doing those more challenging, fine dining, more interesting restaurants now, they are people who came out of that program. So I think it made a huge difference to us, but now that effect is starting to slow down a little bit. But that doesn't, I don't think that's going to slow down the restaurant growth at all. Right. Well, as that slowed down. Well, it's left town as soon as they graduated.

[00:22:12] They would go off to, you know, Myrtle Beach or the cruise industry or, you know, somewhere they could immediately start making money to pay off that student debt. It was, Johnson & Wales is a very expensive education. So, as you think about the students, it may be another economic driver in that. And we had Laura White from the Charlotte Regional Visitors Authority on several weeks ago. And she talked about the economic impact.

[00:22:35] And they've made it part of their strategy to try to promote the food and the food tourism in Charlotte and bringing people here to do that. How much do you think that continues to drive up the quality and, you know, the foodiness of what we're seeing in Charlotte? Oh, I think it continues a lot. Their Top Chef is one. You know, they, the CRVA, I saw a number recently. They paid $1.2 million. That's pretty normal.

[00:23:03] I know that Milwaukee paid about that same thing. When they had Top Chef, I think they paid $1.3 million. We also, one of the things that CRVA has been doing here for a while has been getting together a team of chefs and sending them to Charleston for Charleston Wine and Food Festival. That, I think, had a big effect in showing people that there was a there here. You know, that there was something to come here for. It wasn't just a business town.

[00:23:31] That there are a lot of things you can do here. We've had a number of chefs and groups go to the James Beard House over the years. It's kind of a, you know, sort of a finishing school thing to put on your CRVA. I mean, your resume. I'm not a fancy educated person.

[00:23:51] So, yeah, that support from the city, I think, has made a big impact and is paying off. So, yeah, it's a great thing. Okay. So, now, where does barbecue fit into all of this food, for instance? Oh, there's a conversation for you. Yeah. I was, you know, I was thinking about this before we did this call. I used to write about barbecue all the time.

[00:24:20] I mean, to the point that it just got exhausting. I mean, I reached a point and say to my bosses, please don't make me write about barbecue anymore. Oh, no, don't say that. There weren't left to say. Only because I felt like I had said so much. I used to be asked to judge barbecue all the time. A lot of our barbecue now is shifting.

[00:24:42] It's shifting away from those two-generation, three-generational places, the smaller mom-and-pop places that started in the 50s that were very traditional Piedmont-style barbecue. You're not finding as many of those as you did. What you're seeing now are sort of ambitious chefs who really, really want to make a mark on barbecue. They want to climb that mountain.

[00:25:09] And what they're doing is more of a hybrid. They're doing a lot of brisket. You know, Daniel Vaughn from Texas Monthly was here a couple years ago. And we met up with the Barbecue Bros guys over at John G's, which is one of my favorite barbecue places. I love John G's. Oh, yeah. But we were all sitting around the table outside talking about how you would never have found brisket here 20 years ago.

[00:25:38] You, you know, you wouldn't have had the cheer wine sausage links that are very, very Texas. You wouldn't have, even ribs was not something that you saw a lot here. So that there's kind of a gentrification of the barbecue scene here. And I'm not saying that's a bad thing. It's, there's some wonderful barbecue.

[00:26:02] City limits in West Columbia, South Carolina, every bit on the same level as John G's. Knight's Barbecue, Chris Priato and outside of Raleigh. You know, these guys are doing wonderful stuff. It is not traditional North Carolina barbecue. Is that a good thing? Does that mean that the scene is not more abound? It's allowed to grow and change just like it did back in the 50s when it was getting started here.

[00:26:31] I kind of, you know, I see it both ways. As I, you know, as I said, I'm nonpartisan. As long as, as long as it's well-made and you're cooking over wood, I'm good with you. You know, John Shelton Reed and I can sit around for hours arguing about, you know, the, what he calls the gassers. Sure. You know, I'm, I'm still in favor of if you're going to do it, do it over wood. Do the real thing.

[00:26:58] You know, make it well made and I'm going to be happy. But it, but it is not the same barbecue scene we used to have at all. Yeah. And that new scene gives us a good chance to remind everybody about the Carolina Barbecue Festival. It was part of the Charlotte frenzy in March and April. We had the barbecue brunch at Town Brewing Company in Wesley Heights. That was part of the Charlotte's Got A Lot and Savor Charlotte. Then there was a big festival in uptown Charlotte. That happened thanks to a lot of great partners, pit masters, and of course, everybody who attended.

[00:27:27] You can take a moment to visit carolinabbqfest.org, see all the premier sponsors. And if you don't know them already, you can learn a little bit about all those pit masters and make your plan to visit each and every one in the barbecue summer ahead. Don't forget Carolina Barbecue Festival's fall pig picking is coming up in the works. Sign up to stay in touch at carolinabbqfest.org. You can be the first to get your tickets and then get there to be there when they are on sale.

[00:27:55] So Kathleen, your barbecue backstory, did you make it to any of our festivals over the past five years or so? Maybe tell me about the barbecue you came up with. I was watching your commercial and there was a bunch of faces I recognized. And I was like, oh, you've got some really good players there. Good for you. Yeah. It looked like a good turnout of pit masters. My barbecue background is a little bit strange. I have a barbecue story. Okay. My family, I'm from Georgia. I was born in Columbus, Georgia.

[00:28:25] My dad's from America's Georgia, which is pure South Georgia. My grandfather, my father's father, was a tombstone carver originally. He was a stonemason who, you know, worked for a tombstone company. Hurt his back at the beginning of the Depression and had to find a way to support his family just as, you know, life was ceasing to be worth living in the South at that point in the Depression.

[00:28:53] He started putting on barbecues. He became a professional barbecuer. He didn't have a restaurant. What he would do was go out to farms where people were having a family reunion or a big harvest celebration. And he was the guy who would come out on Friday and oversee the digging of the pit, oversee the burning down of the coals, filling the pits, splaying out the chickens and the hogs and all of those things.

[00:29:20] My dad, who was born in 1921, he would take my father along with him as a little boy. My father's job was to stir the Brunswick stew because you had to stir it with a boat or it doesn't stick because, you know, Brunswick stew has to be stirred continuously. So here's my dad out at these events. All the other kids are playing, having a great time, enjoying the party.

[00:29:47] My dad's got to stand there over this very hot kettle doing that while my grandfather oversaw the cooking of the meat. So I have my family's Brunswick stew recipe that's at least four generations old. I have my family's barbecue sauce recipe that I know my grandfather got from his mother, and I presume she got it from somebody. So I know it's at least four generations old.

[00:30:11] So I was raised literally on this old barbecue tradition. And I have a triptych, a set of three pictures that one of my uncles took of me at 14 months old, my father feeding me my first taste of a spare rib. Literally gumming it. Wow, Kathleen, outside of Sam Jones and Pete Jones and that family, I don't know if there's a better backstory for barbecue.

[00:30:42] Exactly. Tombstone carver to barbecue grandfather. Yeah, yeah. Do you ever share those secret recipes? I say secret. Do you ever share your recipes for Brunswick stew and barbecue sauce? I don't mind sharing it all. You know, I love to share recipes. I hate it when people do that. Well, I can't tell you it's a secret. Oh, come on. You know, people are open and sharing and generous than that. Yeah, I have over the years run some of those recipes. And, you know, my father loved to cook outdoors.

[00:31:10] He made his own grill out of a 50-gallon oil drum, sliced in half, and then, you know, legs welded on. And every Saturday night of my life, my dad was out there. And so I still, I'm a major outdoor cook. I love to cook over live fire, over hot coals. You know, give it to me. Yeah, so it's a gas burner at my house.

[00:31:35] If it seems like it's natural, then maybe you would migrate into a career in food journalism. When you started in those newsrooms at 17, were you thinking food journalism? Or has that come along as a professional? Long, no. I had no idea it existed. My plan was to be, I was going to be a foreign correspondent. I was going to go travel the world. I was going to be a Amapur, you know. But then I went to Florida State in Tallahassee and worked at the Tallahassee Democrat and stupidly fell in love.

[00:32:05] And, you know, married my husband, who was a Tallahassee native. And he hated to cook. He was not from a cooking family. And so I was always the outdoor cook. I was always the one outside on the grill. And my mother-in-law could never understand it. Because she would be like, well, but that's why you cook out. So the men do the cooking. And I'd be like, yeah, but he doesn't want to cook anything interesting. So he got used to my food ways very quickly.

[00:32:32] And then along the way, I discovered, son of a gun, you mean I can write about this? There's a job that involves food writing? I mean, it didn't really exist at the time I was starting to do it. I had to make it up. Yeah, so like vinegar, once you get ink in your veins, it's hard to get it out. I can totally empathize with that. Been there, done that. You hear the press running in the newsroom. There's nothing quite like that.

[00:32:58] But as we think more about barbecue in Charlotte, you mentioned John G's. You mentioned City Limits. Anybody else that you would go to in the Carolinas or Georgia back home? Oh, absolutely. I mean, I sweet Lou, always Lou Donald. I love his place. I love his Alabama chicken with the Alabama white sauce. Okay. He does a really good job of that.

[00:33:24] One of the ones that I noticed in your video about the festival, as well as he was on Top Chef here, was Brian Furman. You know, Brian was from Charlotte and has been making noise for years about wanting to come to Charlotte and open something. But he's had, you know, some complications along the way, a fire that shut down his restaurant, some other stuff. So, you know, every time I see Brian, you know, when are you going to do it, man? Come on over here.

[00:33:55] Charleston, John Lewis in Charleston. Yeah. Not John Lewis. That's a politician. But Lewis is in Charleston. Yeah. Love that place. Whenever I'm in Charleston, I always hit that. Really sorry to hear Rodney Scott's place in Charleston is closed at the moment. There's been some business goings on with that that made me really sorry to hear about that because I think Rodney, you know, it's a hell of a story. Hell of a person. Good human. Good.

[00:34:23] You know, love his place whenever I'm around any of his. So, you know, I can always find a good place. Yeah. And you mentioned some of those legacy places that are starting to kind of fade off the map. You didn't call them by name, but kind of alluded to that. And I know there's some coverage about that in the food section and one of those early stories, maybe the first story. What do you feel like now, either whether it's legacy restaurants or barbecue flavors or styles, what do you think the Charlotte barbecue scene is missing now? What do we need more of?

[00:34:54] That old tradition, that old, the old places that were very simple and focused on just a few things. I do miss those terribly. I'll tell you, I got sent one time, the Observer sent me out, talk about a dream assignment. They sent me out to do a story on a barbecue trail. And so I ended up going to, I think it was 17 barbecue restaurants in three days across North and South Carolina.

[00:35:23] And I went to all the old classics. I mean, I went to Fuzzy's. I went to, I mean, there was just all kinds of places. And I was just thinking, I should go back and find that story and see how many of those places are still open. You know, Wilbur Shirley, Wilbur died. There's so many places that it's like what's happened with the Greek diners as well in Charlotte.

[00:35:49] You know, you work really, really hard to put your kids through school. You don't necessarily want them to come back and have to work hard in the food business the way you did. That's, being a barbecue pit master is grinding, grinding work. I've sat up enough times with barbecue, with, I've always liked to joke with people that I've slept with pigs. And I can tell you, it is not an easy job. It is not great for your body to do this.

[00:36:18] So who wants to spend those years supporting a family, building up some equity, sending your kids off to college, and you want them to come back and do what you had to work so hard to do? That's not generally how people want their children and grandchildren to live. So we think that that's just a natural progression on those family-owned restaurants, is that they will reach a point where they're just not sustainable anymore. The land the restaurant is sitting on is worth too much.

[00:36:48] The ingredients it takes, even for the simplest food, is too expensive. The labor involved. You know, I get it. I understand where these restaurants are going. But I also want people to find the ones that survive and support them. And understand they won't be here if you don't go and see them. Helen Schwab was the restaurant reviewer at The Observer for all the years I was food editor.

[00:37:13] It used to drive us both crazy that people would call, oh, such and such a place is closing. I'm just, I'm so heartbroken. And we'd say, okay, when was the last time you went there? Oh, it's probably been five years. Well, now, how do you think they're going to stay alive if you're only going one to five? That's not going to work. Exactly. So, you know, we have to find the places that we believe in and support them.

[00:37:38] But understand that, you know, like Price's Chicken Coop here in Charlotte, beloved restaurant, one of the great fried chicken restaurants. The land that place was sitting on was worth several million dollars. You're going to tell them not to sell and have a family legacy? No brainer. Yeah, exactly. Wouldn't you? Yeah, for sure. With that in mind, and Barbecue King was another one that's closed recently. Property values probably differ a little bit.

[00:38:05] But with those kind of thoughts in mind, do you think that barbecue receives the adequate attention and news coverage in Charlotte and the Carolinas? Could that help solve any of those problems? Interesting. It did receive that coverage for a long time. When I was doing it and when Robert Moss, who still, you know, writes for Southern Living, does his big barbecue piece every year. I think that it has slacked off some.

[00:38:34] There aren't as many evocative stories to be told now that there were fewer of those smaller places. So I don't think you're seeing as much. But also, it's just there's so many other things to write about now. There are so many things to write about, like Supperland, like Seaboy, like, you know, just Rada. I mean, the constant opening of restaurants here in Charlotte, it's like this churn all the time.

[00:39:02] And you have to cover those places as well. So I think barbecue at this point, people probably feel like they know those stories and don't need to read them anymore. So I don't think it is getting as much coverage as it was. Yeah. Interesting. I'm going to have to disagree because that's kind of the foundation of what I'm trying to do here. But let me ask you, you know, we've got it. You've been so generous. You've been so generous with your time here, Kathleen. And we like to try to kind of wrap it up with our guests by, you know, just kind of putting it out there for you.

[00:39:31] I like the barbecue world. Journalism is a grinder, too. You're churning through it. It's hard work. What keeps your fire burning? What has kept you doing this for a career? I love to write about people's lives. And when you write about food, you write about life. There is no life without food.

[00:39:58] And I've always said that people who, you know, there's people out there who, you know, there's people who live to eat and people who eat to live. The people who live to eat, who are really, really interested in food, in local food, in what they're making, in their family traditions, those people are always inevitably interesting people. You know, if you care about what you eat, you're likely to be, you're likely to care about everything else. And you're going to be a really fun person to talk to.

[00:40:27] Whenever I meet people who don't cook, aren't interested, just eat because they're hungry and not because it means something to them, they always tend to be boring people. And I like interesting people. And food is just endlessly interesting. There's always a story to tell. It's always changing.

[00:40:49] So, yes, while the barbecue scene might be changing a bit and the level of stories we're telling might be less frequent than they were, that's because we're turning our attention to other things that are just as interesting. And we know that we have guys like you, good old Sugar, who's telling the story, so I don't have to worry too much because you're doing it now. But, you know, food is always just endlessly interesting to me. I always think I'm going to run out of ideas and I never do.

[00:41:19] And that, my friends, is the final word from Kathleen Purvis, one of the Carolinas' best food journalists and freelance writers, now part of the Food Section's Charlotte Bureau. We're so fortunate to have the work that you and your team, Greg and Taylor, are doing as well as others like you around the Carolinas. And as a longtime Kathleen Purvis reader and fan, I'm really grateful for sharing so much of your time with us today. Thank you, Kathleen. Oh, it's my pleasure. I love to talk about food.

[00:41:43] You've been listening to the Low and Slow Barbecue Show, sponsored by the Carolina Barbecue Festival, carolinabbqfest.org. Visit the website, sign up to stay in touch, and be sure to follow Carolina Barbecue Festival on Instagram and Facebook. To our audience, thank you for listening to the Low and Slow Barbecue Show. If you like what you hear, share our podcast with your food-loving friends, and please subscribe. Give us a five-star rating on your favorite stream.

[00:42:07] Visit LowSlowBBQShow.com for our blogs, other podcast interviews with Hannah Raskin, Nathan Spanauer, Andre James, a lot of other food journalists, Sean Lundwood, even the guys from The Barbecue Pros are in there, too. All that at LowSlowBBQShow.com. Of course, the Low and Slow Barbecue Show is proud to be part of the Mesh.TV Network, a podcast. That's where Andrew Moose is a producer of our podcast and so many others at the Mesh Network. Find them all at TheMesh.TV.

[00:42:34] You can also find me there, as well as the Low and Slow Barbecue Show, where I'm the host, Sugar Willard, reminding you that for the best barbecue and the best barbecue podcast, make it low and slow. You've been listening to The Mesh, an online media network of shows and programs ranging from business to arts, sports to entertainment, music to community.

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