BARBECUE
Also known as: barbicue, barbique, barbeque, Bar-B-Cue, Bar-B-Que, Bar-B-Q, BBQ, Cue and just plain Q.
Either from the Spanish spelling of the Taino Indian word for their method of cooking fish over a pit of coals (barbacoa), or from the French barbe à queue (from whiskers to tail) or de la barbe à la queue (from the beard to the tail) or even the French barbaque (which is from the Romanian barbec) meaning roast mutton. Take your pick, every one has their favorite, and none are certain.
Lexington, North Carolina, is known as the Barbecue Capital of the World, and October was officially declared 'Barbecue Month' with a month long Annual Barbecue Festival. The Festival has a Parade of Pigs on bicycles (also called the Tour de Pig)!
If you didn't already guess, Lexington is famous for its barbecue. The city's first barbecue restaurant opened in 1919. Lexington barbecue is pork shoulder basted with 'dip,' a mixture of water, vinegar, salt, and pepper. It is cooked slowly over hickory wood until it is 'fall apart tender.' One pound of pork takes about an hour to cook. Today there are over 20 barbecue restaurants in Lexington.
In the 1994 Barbecue Festival, 11,000 pounds of barbecue were served to more than 100,000 people.
Library of Congress Local Legacies Project
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