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Barbecue: America's Most Political Food
- jstanley 10y agoPretty sure this is a submarine marketing piece, but I'm not entirely sure who would be paying for it. Is there a cartel of companies that sell barbecue food in America???
- DanCarvajal 10y agoKansas City BBQ is the most overrated food in America.
- mcphage 10y agoThat's... not what this article is about.
- thieving_magpie 10y agoBut it needed to be said.
- deleted 10y ago[deleted]
- alexgaribay 10y agoKansas City isn't even mentioned in the article...
- hellogoodbyeeee 10y agoWhat experience are you basing this opinion off of? Regional differences in food is one of the great things about the US.
- bradleyjg 10y agoDe gustibus non est disputandum.
- ashark 10y agoAs a local I would agree that 1) most KC barbecue joints are unremarkable, and 2) even done right it's good, but not "OMG I've never had meat so delicious" good. Still, though: good. I recommend Q39 and Joe's KC to people visiting who want the good stuff. Just picking any ol' place that says it serves KC barbecue is a recipe for disappointment (goes double for anything at the airport or Crown Center). You'd be better off picking a random Mexican restaurant here than a random barbecue joint. YMMV. [EDIT] incidentally we have a surprisingly decent food scene, and most of it's not barbecue, so don't limit yourself to that if you visit.
- devopsproject 10y agoThe kids had decades to disassociate. They chose the money. Let them rot.
- nightcracker 10y agoThis is probably the most boring submission I've seen (read: skimmed through) on Hacker News in a while. I'm not criticizing writing style or quality here, just the topic seems so incredibly 'un-hackerish' that I'm puzzled how it got so many upvotes.
- strictnein 10y agoI didn't upvote it, but by its title, I thought it was going to mostly be about how different regions have different style BBQ. And those regions generally have a strong dislike for the other regions' styles.
- douche 10y agoStupid articles from the New Yorker always seem to hit the front page, no matter what they are about.
- throwanem 10y agoGoing to throw out a guess that it's got something to do with this buried lede: > Lexington County, which encompasses all but one of the dozen Piggie Park restaurants now in operation, remains a bedrock of hard-right politics. Also: Confederate flags, awful Southern white people, and some folks who moved down from PG County buying property from the latter and looking to get rid of the former. Is it too blithe to say "culture war, move on"?
- SEJeff 10y agoBeing southern or "from the south" and white does not make one automatically awful. That kind of stereotyping is literally what found us in such a political mess and should be discouraged. Please knock it off. If you were to say awful racist white people, I'd agree, but shockingly, there are plenty of awful racist white people in the north as well as the south, they're just louder down south. Note: I'm white, from the south, am a veteran, also tend to lean liberal and work as a software engineer in the 3rd biggest city in the US. I think of myself as progressive and voted for Gary Johnson this election.
- giancarlostoro 10y agoFun fact: Barbecue can be traced to it's Caribbean origins as barbacoa: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barbacoa https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barbacoa Disclaimer, my ancestral heritage is from Puerto Rico.
- fnord123 10y agoThe word, yes. Slow cooking meat as a concept, however, is too pervasive and general a concept to be traced to any single time/place (imo).
- compyman 10y agoThe specific event (i.e. having a barbecue) is a direct descendant from the Caribbean practice. It actually goes over this in the article, along with a very brief description of how barbecues have been used a political events since the founding of the country.
- guelo 10y agoThat etymology seems unlikely since Puerto Rican cuisine has nothing that resembles that style of food.
- giancarlostoro 10y agoThe Tainos were the natives of not only Puerto Rico, but they're mostly gone now. I have a few relatives who are partly Taino, even my great grandmother was a full native to Puerto Rico. To clarify further the Tainos were not only Puerto Rican natives, they were also native to parts of South America (north east), Cuba, Jamaica, and Hispaniola (Haiti / Dominican Republic). It would be incorrect to attribute it to Puerto Rico itself, thus I attribute it to the Caribbean where they were natives. I'm sure it's been done elsewhere, but it became widespread in the southern states first according to Time: http://time.com/3957444/barbecue/ http://time.com/3957444/barbecue/
- dforrestwilson1 10y agoI have eaten at Maurice's several times (it is delicious), but never knew the history. Confederate flags are common at businesses throughout the region, so it's hard to single out Maurice's as an outlier in this regard. Still an interesting read that will make me rethink whether to eat there.
- davidw 10y agoBeing from Oregon, I had no idea until much later in life how diverse different styles of BBQ are. There's some interesting coverage of BBQ as an exception to the homogenous, fast-food culture in the US in Tyler Cowen's book "An Economist Gets Lunch": http://amzn.to/2nZDa0k http://amzn.to/2nZDa0k
- dagenleg 10y agoThe article has a certain vibe which reminds be of USSR's political persecutions.It's pretty disturbing how the author heavily implies that the children have to undergo some kind of renunciation ceremony in order to atone for the ideological beliefs of their father. Perhaps a more fitting title for the article would be "Ancestral sin: an excessively long article about confederate flags and white privilege, with bits of historical moralization"
- actuallyalys 10y agoTo me, this article seemed more about how political barbecue can be. It's equivocal about what the children should do, and never really answers the question of whether it's okay to eat at the restaurant again. You might think that it's obvious that the children have no obligation whatsoever, but that doesn't make contrary opinions political persecution, even in vibe.
- anentropic 10y agoThat's interesting. Do you generally have trouble with reading comprehension skills?