NC’s barbecue revival rolls on as Durham pitmaster plans a new Raleigh restaurant
Call it a revival, call it a renaissance, but North Carolina barbecue is in the midst of a moment.
Next year, one of the pitmasters at the forefront of this movement will open a new barbecue joint in Raleigh.
Wyatt Dickson, co-owner of Picnic in Durham, will open a new restaurant in the redeveloping Gateway Plaza shopping center, just off of Raleigh’s Capital Boulevard. Lending his name to the venture, he’ll call the new project Wyatt’s.
“It’s always been a goal of mine to bring great barbecue to the capital city,” Dickson said in a phone interview. “Raleigh is the big stage in our state.”
Picnic opened in Durham in 2016 as a partnership between Dickson, chef Ben Adams and farmer Ryan Butler, whose Green Button Farm supplied the pasture-raise hogs served in the restaurant. Dickson said Adams is moving on from the restaurant business, but that everything else at Wyatt’s should feel familiar to fans of Picnic.
“Coming to the big city, it will look a little different,” Dickson said. “But it should be very familiar.”
Big city barbecue has always felt a bit like a contradiction, and for generations, downtown Raleigh barbecue belonged to only one restaurant, Clyde Cooper’s. Now, Raleigh is suddenly at the center of this statewide revival, with a number of pitmasters building smokers in the city. By this time next year, there will be a handful of new barbecue spots, including Sam Jones BBQ, Longleaf Swine in the Transfer Company Food Hall and Prime BBQ not too far away in Knightdale.
‘Large barbecue conversation’
Dickson said it’s a little frustrating that everyone’s lightbulbs lit up at the same time, but he believes the state is always hungry for more barbecue.
“I think there’s room for everyone,” Dickson said. “It will be a large barbecue conversation.”
Dickson specializes in making modern whole hog barbecue the old-fashioned way. That starts with humanely raised hogs, he said, without which he believes he’d be in another line of work.
“I think the thing that sets me apart from everyone else, the reason I”m doing barbecue at all, is cooking awesome, pasture-raised pigs from a real North Carolina farmer,” Dickson said. “That makes for the best North Carolina barbecue possible and really showcases our state food. If I didn’t have those pigs, I wouldn’t be doing barbecue.”
North Carolina’s barbecue history stretches back centuries, evolving into distinct styles while enduring collectively as one of the country’s richest culinary traditions. Yet only in the past few years has barbecue started to receive the respect and acclaim of fine dining, culminating in South Carolina’s Rodney Scott winning the James Beard award for Best Chef Southeast in 2018, the second pitmaster ever to win a chef award.
The popularity and profile of Texas barbecue has also helped fan the fire, but Dickson promises that Wyatt’s will be an ode to what North Carolina does best.
“You can’t be all things to all people,” Dickson said. “We’ll do brisket and ribs, but at the end of the day, North Carolina whole hog is the gospel I’m preaching.”
‘A lot of parking’
It took two years for Dickson to find the spot to open Wyatt’s, he said, having scoured downtown before landing on Gateway Plaza as the spot. Unlike at Picnic, he’s building the smokers inside the restaurant this time and will have a slightly larger dining room.
“It’s the way the town is growing,” Dickson said of Gateway’s location north of the Mordecai neighborhood. “There’s a lot of parking, and if I’ve learned anything, it’s parking is important. ... It’s more accessible to more people. Doing things downtown is a hell of a lot more expensive.”
Like Picnic, Wyatt’s will have a full bar and, beyond whole hog, will serve chicken and barbecue sides.
One of barbecue’s rare qualities, Dickson said, is its ability to bring all kinds of people together for a single meal.
“The world we live in is extremely divisive, so the ritual of getting together around the state cuisine is more important than ever,” Dickson said. “I want to remind folks we’re not as far apart as we think we are. ... The highest compliment I get is when I’m serving older people and they say ‘This is what barbecue tasted like when I was a child.’ That gives a lot of meaning to me. It’s the reward I’m looking for.”
This story was originally published November 18, 2019 at 5:49 PM with the headline "NC’s barbecue revival rolls on as Durham pitmaster plans a new Raleigh restaurant."
