On August 1, a pair of Charlotte residents released a detailed guide to one of North Carolina’s most lucrative traditions, which profiled a local restaurant.

The Great North Carolina BBQ Map highlights the barbecue tradition across the state, including information on 434 barbecue restaurants, a list of 42 barbecue festivals and a historical timeline about barbecue in America and its two North Carolina styles, said Amanda Fisher, one of the two people responsible for the map’s creation.

Fisher said she and Paul Bright, the co-creator, have been working on the project for over a year and have uncovered more barbecue restaurants than any other source or guide.

“Hopefully we found every single one of them,” Fisher said. “We have eaten at a good bit of barbecue places around the state. We haven’t been to all of them yet, but that’s definitely the plan. It will take a few years though.”

The project came from Bright and Fisher’s love for travel and barbecue, Fisher said. During the pair’s trips, they would target barbecue restaurants for their stops and sometimes found themselves unprepared in regards to each restaurant’s specifics. For example, some restaurants are cash-only or take-out only. The map addresses these details and gives information for each restaurant, including the address, phone number, hours of operation, Fisher said. Also, some restaurants’ hours of operation vary by season. The map includes that information as well, when applicable.

“We’ve always tried to find these places, but it’s hard in some of the small towns,” Fisher said. “All the books and resources out there focus on a lot of the same places so we really felt there needed to be more information that detailed things we wanted to know and that others want to know too.”

Fisher said the map breaks down the differences in North Carolina’s two styles of barbecue — Eastern style and Piedmont style, also known as Lexington or Western style. However, unlike other guides, Fisher and Bright did not provide reviews or ratings of any kind in their roadmap, Fisher said in a press release.

“Everyone has different tastes,” Fisher said in the release. “We want people to try the barbecue and decide for themselves what they like.”

The map also includes color-coded symbols, indicating whether each restaurant cooks the whole hog or parts of it, what cooking method is used and what style of sauce is served, Fisher said. The map symbols illustrate the influence of geography on each restaurant’s barbecue.

The eastern part of the state has heavy concentrations of whole-hog barbecue, which is historically accurate to the style, Fisher said. On the map, there is a strong red patch of red to represent Piedmont sauce around the I-85 corridor through Kannapolis, Salisbury, Lexington and up into Winston Salem. This trend starts changing between Burlington and Hillsborough, as sauce transitions to Eastern-style, Fisher said. There are also symbol colors for other sauces that aren’t traditional to the state. Fisher said this is due to barbecue traditions from bordering states that have bled into the areas on the outer edges of North Carolina. The map also addresses anomalies that are exceptions to the traditions of each region’s style, Fisher said.

A local restaurant featured on the guide, Boss Hog’s Backyard Barbecue in Washington, is one of those anomalies. Fifteen-year owner Charlie Baker said although his restaurant used to cook whole hogs, which is traditional to the Eastern style, he now cooks Boston Butts. This is the North American name for a cut of pork that comes from the upper part of the shoulder from the front leg, Baker said.

“It’s a lot easier to cook the Boston Butts,” Baker said. “There’s less grease and less to throwaway.”

Baker said Boss Hogs’ smokes barbecue in their rotisserie machine using wood, but there are several methods used to cook barbecue like using gas or charcoal. Another exception to the rule is Boss Hogs’ sauce. Although they use a vinegar sauce, it is tomato-based, Baker said. Tomato-based sauces are prominent to the Piedmont style of barbecue.

The map is truly a North Carolina product, conceptualized by Fisher and Bright in Charlotte, designed in Raleigh and printed by Meredith-Webb Printing Company in Burlington, Fisher said.

“We really wanted to bring together a group of North Carolina minds for this project to give the map a great southern feel,” Fisher said. “Everyone who worked on this project is completely obsessed with barbecue.”

To order a copy of the Great NC BBQ Map, visit www.thegreatbbqmap.com.