Foodie Post: The Blistered Pig

My wife and I headed out for a delayed Valentine's Day dinner Sunday night and decided to check out a new barbecue place that recently opened in downtown Apex, North Carolina which is about 20-25 minutes south of both Raleigh and Durham.  The restaurant is about a five minute drive from our house and is located inside a cool old building near some of our favorite local hangouts.  Our favorite North Carolina barbecue place has been going downhill for the past two years, so we were eager to give this place a try.  

 

For my readers outside of North Carolina, like all southern states, barbecue is a pretty big deal here and definitely a unique experience.  When I first moved to North Carolina a decade ago I was not quite sure what to make of it at first.  There are two types of North Carolina barbecue: Eastern and Western.  The Western Carolina barbecue is tomato based and not too far from what I was accustomed to growing up in Missouri in terms of sauce.  Eastern is vinegar based.  All of it is made of of pork which is slowed cooked using some sort of wood.  The wood and spices within the tomato base or vinegar base vary from restaurant to restaurant.  

Let's start off with a couple of little things with the Blistered Pig.  The service was really good the night we went in.  Yes, it was a Sunday night, but the place was still pretty busy.  I really liked the hush puppies, a staple of North Carolina barbecue, that were brought out before dinner.  I know the famous restaurant rule of not filling up on bread, but these were awesome.  The mixture of cornbread that was used was light, they can be really doughy some places, and had actual pieces of corn in the mixture.  The butter sauce was homemade and had a little hint of jalapeño peppers which give it a little bit of heat.  Nothing obnoxious.  Great way to start dinner.  

After a decade I have become a bit of a traditionalist in terms of my North Carolina barbecue.  What makes the barbecue good here?  Pulled pork, vinegar sauce, great sides.  The Blistered Pig offers customers a variety of different meats, but I had to go with the pork on my first trip into the restaurant.  For my sides I went with baked beans and red mashed potatoes.  The platter also came with two of those really good hush puppies.  They also have grits, brussel sprouts, collards, and two different types of slaw.

Overall the barbecue was excellent.  Really well cooked and well seasoned.  The restaurant offers two different sauces for your meat.  At most North Carolina barbecue places you have Eastern Barbecue Sauce (vinegar based) and Western (tomato), but the Blistered Pig offered a combination sauce (tomato and vinegar) and another sauce with jalapeño flavoring.  I went with the combination sauce.  Really good.  

My sides were excellent too.  The beaked beans had a kind of stew like texture to them with big chunks of onion and meat mixed in with the beans.  The potatoes were really good too, but I should have tried the slaw.  Nothing against the potatoes, they were good.  I love cole slaw, not sure why I did not try one of them.  On the return trip it is going to be a must for me.  

My wife got the same barbecue, but opted for the brussel sprouts and the grits.  The sprouts were served with bacon and onions and were delicious if you are a brussel sprouts person. Let's talk about the grits.  As a midwesterner I have zero use for grits.  In my opinion, grits are a really bad version of oatmeal that every southerner I know loves.  I throw all of those opinions away for these grits.  They were cheesy and delicious.  Honestly, I would actually order these and eat them.  Really, really good.  

The restaurant also offered some tasty looking desserts.  All pies.  We went with a Key Lime Pie which came in a small round and was lined with graham crackers.  Really good flavor in the crust, which was moist, and in the pie filling.  Perfect portion for sharing and a great way to end a good dinner out with the wife.  

Overall, if you are in central North Carolina this is a must visit for barbecue restaurants, or if you are visiting the area and want to experience some unique dining to North Carolina this would be an excellent stop.  

Delcious Patch Leftovers

There are not enough posts involving food on my blog.  Wednesday was my first day back at work after a good three weeks off for my school's spring track out.  Love year round school schedule.  Last week, I decided to take an afternoon to soak up the final moments of my break by enjoying some good wings and a few baseball cards.  I was craving some wings and there is no better wings place in the Raleigh-Durham area then Apex Wings.  It's about ten minutes from my house.  Great spot for some good eats. 

My next stop was Big D's Sports Cards.  I did pick up a box and will be happy to share my winnings in the coming days, but until then I will share a cool single card I picked up at my favorite local card shop. 

Jimmy had a great run of pulls from the Gypsy Queen boxes.  One of the boxes opened in the store yielded a really nice Rick Porcello patch card.  It was kind of a cool looking card and caught my attention with the red patch piece on a Tigers card.  Definitely caught my eye and got my mind thinking.  I decided to buy the card from Jimmy and do a little research. 

 

The answer to the Porcello card was pretty easy.  I found a cool picture of the Tigers wearing some cool Detroit Stars uniforms they wore during a Negro League tribute they put on during an Inter-league match with the Pirates.  I'm not quite sure which letter the Porcello patch comes from, but a close look at the picture below shows that the bottom and edges of the lettering matches the patch piece from these uniforms. 

In fact, the patches in Gypsy Queen are really pretty cool cards.  Usually when you pull a relic card out of a pack it's really really hard to tell the exact game or dates that the relic swatch on the card was used.  There are cards that Topps has put into set that are date and game specific.  For example, Topps usually puts together a nice set of relic cards featuring All-Star Game jerseys in their Update set every fall.  Of course, a jersey can make a lot of little swatches and it appears that Topps had some tasty leftovers hanging out somewhere waiting to mix into a nice card set to make some tasty relics for collectors to chase. 

 

Some of the patch pieces in the set appear to be fairly innocent until you start to put the pieces of an individual player together.  Take this Yadi card above for example.  The card looks like a pretty unspectacular piece of red jersey swatch.   Yes, the Cardinals do wear red batting practice jerseys.  Let's start piecing together some more Yadier Molina cards from the Gypsy Queen set....

There are lots of patch cards the set that have little pieces of blue, red, and yellow swatches.  The cards look normal at first glance, but again patching several pieces together show that they really do not seem to fit the usual pattern of Cardinals patches.  The card below looks like a standard piece of the yellow bat piece from a Cardinals jersey.  However, the second piece below is not a standard patch piece from a Cardinals jersey. 

The jersey pieces and patches actually come from the jersey below.  The 2009 National League All-Star jersey.  While the jersey still has the yellow bat going across the front, the white lettering, red trim, and blue patch pieces fit the All-Star jersey to a tee.  Add in the fact that the good people at Topps actually used plenty of other All-Star jerseys in the set....

Only the other cards in the set coming from All-Star Game jerseys are a little bit more obvious than the Molina cards.  There are actually several really nice examples of these cards on the jumbo patches that Topps inserted into the set.  Below is a cool picture of a Chris Sale jumbo patch that came from the 2012 All-Star game in Kansas City.  Note the Royal blue jersey piece on the left hand of the swatch and the dark blue number with the stars on the number.  The Sale jumbo cards with plain blue jersey swatches have been selling for less than $10, but the patch pieces are looking a tad bit steep.  Like three digits, hundred dollar steep. 

and Sale is not even the top of the All-Star Patch heep in this set.  I really like these Big Papi patches in the set which obviously came from the All-Star game in Arizona with the snake skin print on the numbers on the left-hand side of the card.  Surprisingly the Ortiz patch sells for close to the same price as the Sale.  Hmmm.

Anyway, if you have a favorite player or team with patches in the Gypsy Queen set do your homework and see if the patch pieces might actually belong to a cool jersey that can actually be traced back to a specific event or game.