Holiday home-cooking—but not at home
Southern comfort
by Jane Hobson Snyder
Home-cooking, sticky floors and all
Everyone has a soft spot for the Triangle's most storied eateries. They are institutions, with centuries of service between them, where memories and tradrun thick, inspiring loyalties nearly as bellicose as those inspired by basketball. At Bullock's and Dillard's in Durham, Big Ed's and the Mecca in Raleigh, and Allen & Son and Mama Dip's in Chapel Hill, it sometimes seems the lines of customers will never end.
But a few new places require attention too.
"Talking about hidden gems, this is our hidden gem: It's called Backyard BBQ," says John.
"Backyard BBQ Pit!" corrects Dale.
Like Allen & Son, Backyard BBQ Pit cooks with wood, which automatically elevates it. From okra fried up right when you order it, to hushpuppies that are so light and sweet they seem more like a treat at the fair, "everything is just right," says John. (These words, intoned with deep meaning, are akin to conferring knighthood.)
On a recent visit to Backyard BBQ Pit, on Highway 55, a mile south of Interstate 40, the Indy spoke with Donald Cozart, who runs the place with his aunt, uncle and brother. In April 2007, they bought it intact from the owner of AW's Barbecue. The previous owners had a following, but under the new management, the name changed, the recipes changed, and the place boomed.
"At AW's, a lot of canned foods were used, and we wanted to go with the homey-type feel, with real quality food. We started making our own potato salad, our own coleslaw. All of our foods except for the baked beans are now homemade. We really take pride in what we do," says Cozart.
"We smoke every day—the guy who was smoking before, he wasn't smoking every day. People that know real good-quality barbecue can kind of taste that 'leftover' taste. It's worth the extra work."
Though this is their first restaurant venture, the family is practiced in feeding large groups: "God has blessed us to do that. My uncle, we consider him the master chef, he instilled in me and my brother the concept of how to produce the quality product that we do in a large quantity.
"[Before this,] we lived in, how do you say it, a less fortunate community. We have a nonprofit organization, it's called the Vision Youth Association. It's an outreach ministry that reached [out] to a lot of kids in the community that we stayed in—we'd have basketball teams and we had cookouts. That's how we went into the restaurant business. Our one-year anniversary, we had over 600 people here."
Though it's Monday at 2:30 p.m., Cozart's cell phone and landline take turns ringing, occasionally overlapping in jazzy syncopation. He effortlessly juggles lunch lines, phone lines and queries from the kitchen while maintaining a friendly banter with customers.
It should be quiet, well after the lunch rush, but every minute or so another customer strolls in, studying the price list above Cozart's head ($6.49 for a meat dinner with two sides and hushpuppies, $3.50 for a barbecue sandwich). Well-muscled and elaborately tattooed, he welcomes new diners with a knowing nod ("First time here?") and a sample-cup of chopped pork barbecue. Though the menu offers pork chops, beef ribs, roast chicken and a wide variety of fish, that little plastic cup does the trick: Everyone is won over by the balance of spice, vinegar and woodsmoke (including Clay Aiken, a regular, who reportedly lives nearby).