The Lexington Barbecue Festival
Lexington, North Carolina
Once a year, in the quiet old town of Lexington, North Carolina, tourists from all around the American South-east make a pilgrimage to this, otherwise typical Southern city. Unlike many of the other dying or dilapidated small towns around the country, Lexington’s traditional downtown still maintains the same look and feel of its heyday in the 1950s.
While there are several old mills and factories on the outskirts of town left to rot and collapse into itself, the heart of the town has seen a rebirth. Young people from across the state move to Lexington to open their own boutique shops and trendy cafes. Many places across North and South Carolina have turned into ghost towns due to the closing of local mills, how then is it that Lexington was able to avoid this fate?
One of the reasons that Lexington, in recent years, has had a breath of new life is due to the Lexington Barbecue Festival.
You can read more about Lexington here!
Capital of Barbecue
American cuisine has often been mistakenly defined as consisting of nothing more than hamburgers and french fries. While your typical American does enjoy their fast food and burgers, The South, more specifically North Carolina, takes pride in its pulled barbecue.
The self-dubbed “Barbecue Capital of the World” has been attracting foodies and tourists from around the country since 1984. Well before the founding of the festival, Lexington has already made a name for itself for its unique style of barbecue, rightfully called “Lexington Style”.
The Lexington Barbecue Festival has grown to such an extent that it has been known to bring in over 150,000 people for its one day of festivities. Lexington has gotten so much national notoriety that it has been listed by US News and World Report as the 4th best city for barbecue and has even been featured in the book “1000 Places to See in the United States and Canada Before You Die“.
You can read more about the Lexington Barbecue Festival here!
Redneck Pig Racing
Call it a Southern tradition or maybe even cruel and inhumane, pig racing is woven deep into the fabric of The South’s country fair culture. While on one end of the fairgrounds you have pigs being cooked up to be gorged down by swarms of mouth-watering tourists, on the other is a makeshift track where anything from ducks to the famous piglets race around the oval for the enjoyment of festival-goers.
The humor is very tongue-in-cheek as the announcer makes bad puns to get a few snickers out of the crowd. The host’s long Southern drawl further creates the ambiance of being engulfed in true Southern culture. After a short introduction and riling up the crowd, the gates are released and the pigs take to the track, much to the enjoyment of families with children.
You can read more about local pig racing here!
Log Chopping to Swinging
Other than Lexington’s pig-centric activities, the barbecue festival also hosts many concerts throughout the stretch of its uptown area. Most of the bands play either classic rock or their own country music concoctions. While many can tap their foot to Journey covers and some light swing music, others may not know what is more cringe-worthy: a Jimmy Buffet classic turned into “Barbecue in Paradise” or the new Republican anthem “God, Guns, and Moonshine”?
The music may be hit or miss, but there are still plenty of novelty events to attend around downtown Lexington. Other than the Pig Racing, the Logging competitions are sure to bring in quite a crowd. These lumberjacks hailing from all corners of North Carolina, engage in competitive racing to see who can ax their way to first place by splitting their log in two. Although the event may get quite repetitive over time, it is still an interesting enough sight to behold.
For a full event list for the Lexington Barbecue Festival click here!
Southern Delicacies
Among the rows of vendors and sponsors whose tents all lineup and down the main street, you can find all kinds of different American fair food and tastes of Southern cooking. Your typical American fair food ranges from the tempting chili cheese fries to sweet funnel cakes.
Fair food is known for pushing the boundaries and breaking all rules of the culinary world with such food as deep-fried Oreos to donut hamburgers. While the Lexington Barbecue festival will give you a sample of what a fair may have to offer, to truly get the American fair experience in North Carolina you will have to go to the State Fair or, my personal favorite, the Cabarrus County Fair!
For more information on American fair food click here!
Lexington Style Barbecue
The Lexington Barbecue’s main event is, of course, the barbecue. Throughout uptown Lexington you will find many official vendors preparing and selling these delectable dishes to anxious customers queued up three to four people deep. What the festival does lack, however, is public demonstrations and competitions between regional restaurants and barbecue enthusiasts.
The Lexington style, also known as the Piedmont style, barbecue is unique in that it only uses the meat from the pig’s shoulder with a red sauce combined with ketchup, vinegar, and pepper. This “dip” is also used as the base for the “red slaw”, coleslaw which is also often eaten with the barbecue.
The Lexington Barbecue Festival is a time to showcase one of the many styles of barbecue found throughout the United States. Once a year, people from around the country can experience small town southern charm with world famous flavor in Lexington, North Carolina.
Missed the festival? You can still try Lexington style barbecue here!
