GOOD NEWS: Short Sugar's BBQ Sauce is hitting store shelves soon-ish!

This blog has been SLAMMED with visitors since three days ago coming to read about Short Sugar's Bar-B-Q in Reidsville, North Carolina shutting down after more than 75 years in business.  The counter has been ringing up visits from all fifty states, Canada, Ireland, Australia, Germany, even some people in Brazil. There were few corners of the globe that hadn't heard of Short Sugar's, it seems.  Judging by the comments and e-mails that have come in there have been a lot of folks who are regretting that they will now never have an opportunity to eat at a place that once was judged to have the best barbecue in America.  Short Sugar's was the kind of place that they just don't make anymore and it's not just a loss to a small town, but to our culture as a whole.

Well, it's been a very depressing past 72 hours but there is a little bit of light to break through the gloom.  Short Sugar's as a location may be gone, but its signature barbecue sauce will live on!  And it may be coming to your front door before too awful long.

Here's what Short Sugar's owner David Wilson posted on Facebook earlier today:

"We will continue producing the sauce. I think we will start on Amazon and in local stores... I’m going to change our social media presence to focus on the sauce."

I hope David and the rest of the Wilson family are bracing themselves.  Because for years a lot of us have been wanting Short Sugar's sauce to be widely distributed.  Until now bottles of it have only been really available for sale at the restaurant.  It has been highly demanded for a very long time.  Bringing this sauce to the larger marketplace is going to be a veritable goldmine.  It is going to take the world by storm!  There is no sauce like Short Sugar's, is something unique all its own.  It's not something you slather onto meat, it's more like you saturate your pork or chicken or whatever with it.  This is the perfect thing to accentuate chopped barbecue especially.  I've also had a bit of success using it on ribs.  So maybe this will be like the second coming of Short Sugar's.  It has been more than a place to eat, it has been an enduring idea: a spot for the mind as much as for the taste buds.  And now it seems that it will endure.  Not just that but also thrive!  Short Sugar's sauce is poised to take the greater world by surprise and in my mind there is not a product that more deserves a position in the global market.

I shall be keeping my eyes open about this with great interest!

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Dateline: Reidsville, North Carolina: Short Sugar's is no more

Of all the things that the Biden economy has destroyed, in its final days it has taken down one last victim.  And being a proud son of the town of Reidsville, North Carolina, this is the most bitter loss of all.

Short Sugar's Pit Bar-B-Q

1949 ~ 2025

The sad word came down earlier today.  Reidsville's most famous restaurant has shuttered for good.

Short Sugar's had been hobbled, first by COVID closures but mostly because of economic downturn in the past few years not related to the pandemic.  People just couldn't afford to eat out like they used to be able to.

This really does feel like a piece of my heart has been ripped out.  Short Sugar's was the kind of place you just knew would be around forever.  It is at the heart of the identity of the City of Reidsville, North Carolina.  Some of my earliest memories are of eating at Short Sugar's.  At first the hot dogs but as I got older it was that wood-fired barbecue.  Sometimes I would even order and devour two plates, I could get so hungry for it.  I hadn't been back to Reidsville as often as I'd like in recent years but whenever I did, I always stopped at Short Sugar's for lunch and afterward went to Mayberry for a chocolate milkshake.  And that was my "coming home" ritual since leaving Reidsville in 2016.

My sister worked at Short Sugar's for a number of years, too.  There was a real sense of family at the place.  We knew them and they knew us.

I don't know when the next time I'll ever visit Reidsville will be.  The more I hear about the place the more it sounds like a foreign country, now.  The tobacco field near where I grew up is today a vast solar farm.  Some businesses have gone and others have come in.  Thomas Wolfe really was right, "you can't go home again."  And with the departure of Short Sugar's, I'm feeling that harder than ever this afternoon.

Who knows though, maybe someone will swoop in and resurrect the place sometime.  But it would be too different.  The Wilson family has owned and operated it all this time, it won't be the same without them.

I'm going to miss that barbecue sauce.  A vinegar and brown sugar-based concoction unlike any sauce I've ever encountered.  The perfect enhancement for chopped pork.  Now I wish that I had stocked up on it.

Wow.  So much that could be said about a barbecue restaurant and drive-in.  Short Sugar's really was the kind of place that that they don't make any more of in America.  In 1982 it was judged as having the best barbecue in the country.  I don't know if they held that competition again but if they ever did I've no doubt that Short Sugar's would still be a worthy competitor.

And now, it's... gone.

Damn.  I finally feel old now.

Edit 01/17/2024: More than a few have noted something, and I was woefully remiss to mention this.  That Short Sugar's was not only famous throughout the state of North Carolina, but also across America and even known throughout the WORLD!  Short Sugar's hosted quite an international clientele over the decades.  I myself brought friends from Belgium to eat there a few times and they made sure to take bottles of barbecue sauce home with them.  I also have it on very good authority that several bottles made it to Germany in 1993.  For there to be no more Short Sugar's is truly a loss to us all.

Speaking of the larger world, since making this post 21 hours ago yesterday it has been read nearly 5,000 times.  The blog has always had a faithful global audience but yesterday this post especially has found visitors from almost all fifty states and also places like Canada and Ireland.

I have heard from David Wilson, the owner of Short Sugar's, and he is truly overwhelmed by the many tributes that people are making.  David, on behalf of everyone: thank you and your family and staff, for everything.

(Note: the photo is from Roadfood.  I had just grabbed any pic I could find of Short Sugar's without looking at the link.  They're the ones who originated the photo.)

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New recipe: barbecued wild boar ribs!

Remember the hit television series Lost?  John Locke (magnificently played by Terry O'Quinn) would sometimes go off into the jungle hunting.  More often than not he came back with a wild boar, upon which the castaways would enjoy feasting.

It turns out that if you want to eat like Locke, you DON'T have to go to a mysterious island.  In some places, you can buy boar already prepared to cook in your kitchen.

I've been having a hankering to try wild boar ribs ever since first spotting them on sale at Country Meat Center in Woodruff, South Carolina.  I was with a client (let's call him "Rufus") and we came across them while perusing the products at what I good heartedly refer to as "that crazy meat store".  I call it that because of the positively BONKERS variety of food items they have, everything from porterhouse and ground chuck, to kangaroo and octopus.  If it's meat, this place has it.  Anyhoo, I saw those and told Rufus that I had to give that a shot.  Had some time this afternoon so I decided to go to the crazy meat store on my own and see if they were still in stock.  Turned out they were.

I barbecued them, adapting from a recipe I found at Emerils.com.  They came out beautifully!  Although I think the specimen these were taken from was a rather small one.  Boar get MUCH bigger than this, I believe.  But for an introductory to the dish it was plenty.  There is a wood-ish aroma to cooked wild boar, and it tastes a tad bit like pork ribs you'd find in a good wood-pit cooked barbecue restaurant.  Quite a pleasant experience.

So if you come across wild boar baby back ribs in your own neighborhood meat market, here's how I prepared mine if you need some idea to work from...

Barbecued wild boar ribs

Fill a small baking pan with cold water.  Place this on the lowest rack of your oven.  This will keep the ribs moist and juicy during the fairly long cooking time.

Preheat oven to 250 degrees Fahrenheit.

Line a large baking sheet with aluminum foil.

Place the ribs on the foil and cook uncovered for 2 hours.

When the ribs have been cooked, remove the baking sheet from the oven.  Using a basting brush and tongs to turn the ribs over and coat both sides of the ribs with your choice of barbecue sauce (I use Williamson Brothers Bar-B-Q Sauce).

Bake for an additional 15 minutes.

After 15 minutes, remove the sheet from the oven and turn the ribs over.

Bake for another 15 minutes.

Remove from oven and enjoy!

 

EDIT: I'm kicking myself for totally forgetting about Obelix: the giant best friend of Asterix!  Obelix has an affinity for wild boar, not unlike that of a meth addict.  Indeed, every story (I think) from the classic Goscinny and Udurzo comic ends with the whole tribe partying with ample amounts of boar.

 If you've never read an Asterix comic book, check your local bookstore or search out Amazon, and prepare for a treat.  Every issue, I'm pretty sure has been translated into English.  My first Asterix book was Asterix the Gladiator: as much a hilarious "fish out of water" story as there is ever apt to be.

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12,000-year old barbecue joint found in Cyprus

Archaeologists working on the island of Cyprus in the Mediterranean Sea are saying that a cave discovered there in 1961 may have been a take-out barbecue diner used around twelve thousand years ago. Except that instead of beef or pork, those ancient Cypriots were feasting on small hippopotamuses... and the human's appetite may have helped drive the species into extinction.

Thousands of prehistoric hippo bones found in Cyprus are adding to a growing debate on the possible role of humans in the extinction of larger animals 12,000 years ago.

First discovered by an 11-year-old boy in 1961, a tiny rock-shelter crammed with hippo remains radically rewrote archaeological accounts of when this east Mediterranean island was first visited by humans.

It has fired speculation of being the first takeaway diner used by humans to cook and possibly dispatch meat. It also adds to growing speculation, controversial in some quarters, that humans could have eaten some animals to extinction.

In Cyprus, where islanders' love of the barbecue is alive and well to this day, it would have been the pygmy hippo, or "Phanourios minutus," an endemic species resembling a large pig which apparently vanished around the same time people appeared on the island...

I wonder what kind of sauce they used on those hippo ribs.

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Return to Pigs R Us

Earlier this evening Lisa went up to Martinsville, Virginia and a place that I love a lot but sadly haven't gotten to go to very much lately: Pigs R Us Barbecue. You might remember that I first wrote about the place a year and a half ago. This was probably our fourth trip back and I honestly cannot recommend it enough if you want delicious barbecue. In fact, so far as traditional barbecue ribs go, they might have the best that I've had... possibly anywhere! Tonight I had the full rack of ribs, smothered in Pigs R Us's own brand of grilling sauce. Lisa got a half rack of 'em. We also bought two bottles of the grilling sauce on the way out.

Here's their website again. It may be a bit off the beaten path, but there's a reason why people are flocking to it, especially since this outfit is winning awards all over the country with their barbecue. Check 'em out!!

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