Western North Carolina will teach you things about barbecue that no food blog has ever bothered to explain.
The first lesson is that the best smoke is almost always attached to a building you would drive past without a second thought. The second lesson is that once the smell finds you, all other plans become negotiable.
I learned both of these things on the same afternoon, somewhere between a mountain pass and a destination I no longer remember, when a ribbon of hickory smoke crossed the road in front of me and essentially made the decision on my behalf…