Review of Jackson Bros. BBQ, Tramway (Sanford), NC, by H. Kent Craig

Review of Jackson Bros. BBQ
US #1 South of Tramway
Tramway (Sanford), NC
919-776-8887

by
H. Kent Craig Š2000

Jackson Bros. BBQ, located on the right past the Food Lion Shopping Center as you head south on US Highway #1 heading from Raleigh towards Southern Pines, is an oasis of Lexington-style (Western-NC-Style) barbecue in a barren local wasteland devoid of any reasonable form of burned porkflesh that could conceivably otherwise be called "barbeque".

You'd think that Sanford, being the polite and genteel town but with blue-collar small-town roots that it is, would be present with if not overflowing with decent barbecue restaurants, but that's not the case. To find decent, 3-pig rated or better barbecue other than Jackson Bros., you'll have to go 40-50 miles in any direction to drink sweetmeat from the font of sacred Holy Grub waters which is North Carolina-Style barbeque.

Jackson Bros. BBQ is a true Lexington-Style 'cue, pork shoulders only seasoned with a delicious vinegar/ketchup/sugar-based sauce. Like all good sauces, it excites one's taste buds, opening them up to receive the flavor of the excellently-cooked swineflesh, bringing the taste of the meat out, not smothering it with seasoning flavormasks. Fine chopped in texture, most pieces are less than 1/2" in size, with virtually no fat accidentally mixed in with it, and every bite is 100% cooked through and still maintains tenderness.

Their roundball hushpuppies and draughts of iced tea are also very good, as all are the other items on their menu. My wife also asked to plug their chicken gizzards, which she said are as good as any she's ever had (I don't eat gizzards, Smile...and if you don't know what the Southern delicacy known as a chicken gizzard is, email me and I'll explain). For those who don't like pork barbecue, there's plenty of other standard grille items on their menu.

While Jackson Bros. BBQ lacks an inside sit-down seating area, having to use the drivethrough or go inside the air-conditioned front parlor to ask of and receive your order, they do have one of the neatest outside picnic spots we've ever used adjacent to the building. Sitting at large, park-type picnic tables under the welcoming shady canopy of two ancient oldgrowth oak trees while wolfing down Lexinton-Style barbecue that would do any place west of I-85 proud gives you a special if not nearly transcendental feeling that Mitchell Jackson is fulfilling his purpose in the universe by chef'ing out such great 'cue.

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