The Buhner.com Blog

One of the major differences that we’ve experienced since moving down to NC is food.  Understand that Tara and I both appreciate food, and that one of the joys we get out of vacationing is going to local grocery stores to ”see what’s different”.  It’s on several different levels here though.

For instance, barbeque.  One of the things I looked forward to most moving down here is getting “real” barbeque.  Mind you, it’s not Kansas City here or anything, but in New York, anything in a ketchup based sauce (or in reality, anything cooked on a grill) can be considered barbeque.  Not so in North Carolina, and for my family (who don’t watch Food Network or anything), it’s an adjustment.  NC barbeque, first off, is pulled pork.  And it’s just that - “barbeque”.  It’s not barbeque pork, or pulled pork, but barbeque.  After that, NC barbeque “sauce” is a vinegar and pepper flake based sauce, that on first appearence looks dry.  When you get a pint of barbeque at Smithfield’s you get what looks like a tub of dried pulled pork.  The same tub up north would be dripping in burgandy sauce and probably stain your shirt.  But the sauce is there, and (depending on the location) gives the pork a bite of vinegar.  I eventually want to try some without the sauce and just get to the smoke - that’s what I want my barbeque to taste like.

Now, “Carolina Style barbeque” is described above.  A hamburger or hot dog “Carolina Style” has absolutely nothing to do with that.  Ask for a burger “Carolina Style” and you’ll get a hamburger with mustard, grilled onion, chili, and cole slaw.  All together.  For those of you who’ve never had, it’s surprisingly good.  The cole slaw is generally shredded and diced (say like KFC slaw without any big pieces of cabbage) and works well enough as a condiment.  The chili is a more meat based chili that (at least where I’ve had it) is closer to something you’d get at Taco Bell than a red sauced kidney bean having mixture.  Interestingly enough, Wendy’s has embraced the Carolina Style burger (dubbing it the “Carolina Classic”) and you can buy one at any Wendy’s here.

Moving onto fast food, understand that we moved from the Hamptons (which only had a McDonalds and Burger King in somewhat proximity, with the outsiders like KFC and Taco Bell a special half hour trip away) and into fast food heaven here.  There’s a Wendy’s down the road, still technically in the subdivision that we live in.  Also within close proximity (say within a less than 10 minute drive) is Chick-Fil-A, Pizza Hut, Dairy Queen, Taco Bell, Jersey Mikes, Subway, Quiznos, Sonic, and Hardee’s, not to mention the delivery capabilities of Papa John’s and Dominos and two Chinese take-out places that charge a fraction of what the places by us charged.  But really the jewel in all of this is a place called Dream Burgers down Capitol Blvd.  Located between 540 and 440, Dream Burgers looks like a chain, although I’ve never seen another one (and there’s no references to the place ANYWHERE online, outside of a chick’s MySpace profile and health inspection reports), with their logo and building design.  The burgers and fries (important) are fresh made, and remind me a lot of In-And-Out, which I’ll never see again until we go back to Vegas.  The interior of the place has a lot of flat screen TVs playing various movies (muted, so you see captions), which is somewhat amusing because not all the movies being played (at the time I went) were G-rated; with Save The Last Dance playing on one TV, there was an explitive-laden tirade that was nicely written out for the Dream Burgers’ dine-in clients.  The food is made to order and takes a little time, so when eating there you sit at the table with drinks and they bring the food to you when ready.  At the same time, they also have a drive-thru, which I wouldn’t think would make as much sense with any time saved going through the drive-thru is wasted by sitting in line, waiting for your food to be cooked.  Dream Burgers gives the option of ordering your burger “Wild Style”, which is a variation of the “Carolina Style” using only the mustard and grilled onions, while regular burgers get sliced raw onion.

The mustard issue (Dream Burgers say that the “Wild Style” burgers are “mustard grilled”, whatever that means) is something as a Long Islander I didn’t have to deal with.  Apparently in 99% of the country, a typical fast food hamburger is topped with onion, ketchup, mustard, and pickle.  On Long Island (and only Long Island, apparently), there is no mustard on a hamburger.  It’s an unwritten rule.  When I was 14 and worked at McDonalds, every training film showed mustard being put onto the burger, but there was never mustard on a Long Island fast food hamburger, whether it was McDonalds, Burger King, or Wendy’s.  I remember specificly having a hatred for mustard when I was younger and having to remember when we went on vacation to specificly ask for “no mustard” when we went to get fast food.  I’m still not sure why it’s only Long Island, but it’s very much in effect, and not just a single franchise’s policy or anything.

Finally, let me wrap this up back at the drive-thru.  I already mentioned Dream Burgers slow drive-thru and justified it with their freshly made food.  However, now having dealt with a decent amount of fast food drive-thrus here, I’ve just come to the conclusion that - while seemingly everyone you meet around here isn’t local to the area - Southern-style laid back approaches still do exist, at least when it comes to “fast food”.  There are a good number of McDonalds on the Island that offer a “60 Second Guarantee”; if you have to wait more than 60 seconds from the time you pay to the time you’re given your food, you get some kind of free product.  There are even digital countdowns so that you don’t have to pull out your own watch and time them.  Usually, by the time you get to the second window the person already has the bag waiting for you.  Not so in North Carolina.  Between the McDonalds in Wakefield that never seems to have McNuggets ready (thanks, my kid is screaming - just drop the damn nuggets) to the KFC we went to for a bucket of chicken that had to give us half crispy/half original because they were still making chicken, despite it being 5:30PM and seemingly when their dinner rush would be starting and they weren’t busy in the slightest.

Side entertaining story from that KFC trip: woman came in while we were waiting for our chicken all pissed off.  Apparently she had gone through the drive-thru and ordered popcorn chicken.  They had told her that the chicken would be ready in “two minutes”, but the chicken wasn’t ready yet.  She came in demanding to know when the chicken would be ready, and with the two people working there (one cooking, one working the register) essentually hiding from her knowing that their “estimate” was wrong and she was pissed and not wanting to get reamed, they instead just got her more and more pissed off as she kept asking how long the popcorn chicken would take.  Eventually she started yelling out “I DEMAND TO BE ACKNOWLEDGED”, which just sounds really funny coming from someone with a southern twang.  I know I’ll be annoying my wife with that one for the next few months or so.