That was my first thought when it was proposed that we fly across the state of North Carolina in search of the best barbecue. And when I say “no one cares,” I don’t mean that pork-eating carnivores don’t care about who has the best barbecue—oh, they do—but BBQ aficionados don’t care about what I think is the best barbecue.
We needed an expert.
Of course, Senior Photographer David Tulis knew a guy. Jim Auchmutey and Tulis were former newspapermen at The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, and while Tulis came to AOPA when the paper reduced staff, Auchmutey took early retirement and pursued his passion—barbecue. He’s co-authored two cookbooks, The South: The Beautiful Cookbook and The Ultimate Barbecue Sauce Cookbook; written a collection of stories about the South in True South; and written the seminal book on barbecue, Smokelore: A Short History of Barbecue in America. He’s a James Beard Foundation award-winning writer and has appeared on The History Channel’s series The Food That Built America and Netflix’s American Barbecue Showdown. A native Georgian, he comes from a long line of barbecue pitmasters.
