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Louis ribs, 1,000 pounds of chicken, and cooking about 1,500 pounds of macaroni and cheese a week. Kevin Kuruc, the transplanted pitmaster, is responsible for smoking 3,500 pounds of pork butts, 1,500 pounds of brisket, 950 pounds of St. It’s a place well-loved by the Queen City.
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Bankers, bikers, and bubbas sit together at a long banquet-style table toward the back, watching a football game, while Black Sabbath gently purrs from the state-of-the-art sound system behind them is an open kitchen dominated by a hickory-burning smoker. Watching customers float in and out of Mac’s during the course of several hours is like watching time-lapse photography of Charlotte’s cultural strata. As David Jewell, one of Mac’s five owners, told me, “Everybody’s welcome here: white collar, blue collar, and no collar.” It could be a biker club or a happy-hour hangout or a place you’d take your family on a Tuesday night - but it’s none of these things, and all of them. With its four big-screen televisions and world-class selection of beer - more than 300 craft beers are represented here - it could be a sports bar, but it’s not that, either. Mac’s (named after the guy who used to work the old transmission shop the joint is housed in) has been around for less than a decade, which is a millisecond in barbecue time, and the pitmaster (hold on to your trucker hats, folks) comes from Pennsylvania. It’s not a traditional barbecue joint with the red-checkered tablecloths and mammoth glasses of sweet tea and a family history in pork that goes back generations. I was surprised at how good it was, actually, because food is usually an afterthought at a place like this, though it’s hard to say exactly what kind of place a place like this is: Mac’s is different. The sports bar has more than 300 brews, on tap and in bottles. North Carolina law won’t let you incorporate even as a tiny town without at least one barbecue joint within city limits, so a city the size of Charlotte is legally required to have dozens of them, and it does, and some of their barbecue is actually good Mac’s Speed Shop on South Boulevard has some of the best.īeer drinkers should allow some time to sort through selection at Mac’s. And even if your interests skew toward the bizarre - some people think that watching cars drive around in circles is a sport, believe it or not - look no further.Īnd if, like me, barbecue is your hobby, Charlotte might be a great spot to relocate, because there’s a lot of it. If you’re into money - making it, talking about it, wearing it, or living in it - there’s a ton of that here, too. If building skyscrapers is your thing, for instance, there’s plenty of that going on, and you’re bound to meet folks who share your interest. Some lives are easier to find than others. If you can’t be happy in Charlotte, you never will be, because there’s a good life waiting for you here if you’re willing to spend time looking for it.