Top Chef Carolinas turns to Whole Hog Barbecue: A Low & Slow Recap

Bravo’s Top Chef Carolinas turned its lens toward the region’s whole barbecue traditions with an all-star lineup of pitmaster judges.

Now I’ll confess, I’m not a Top Chef regular. It took a while to find Bravo on the TV. But if you tie in a Carolina connection, as the series is doing in its 23^rd season, and add a bunch of the barbecue people who’ve been kind enough to join me on the show – I’m in.

First, let’s talk about who and what we saw from a Carolina barbecue viewpoint. The Low & Slow recap of the show is below along with my own “analysis.”

Who and what did we see on the Top Chef Carolinas Barbecue episode?

We saw a lot of Carolina barbecue faces, most of whom have ties to the Carolina BBQ Festival and appear in feature interviews in our podcast episode library.

• Sam Jones. The fourth-generation scion of smoke was a great tour guide into Carolina barbecue, reflecting his Eastern NC heritage in so many ways. He offered a glimpse into the Jones family’s barbecue roots at Skylight Inn. Sam allowed credit for Lexington Barbecue and Sweet Lew’s BBQ as “best barbecue in the (Charlotte) region,” but competitors’ first Carolina barbecue taste was whole hog chopped from the East.
• Lewis Donald and Sweet Lew’s Barbecue brought competitors face-to-face with whole hog cooking. Lewis walked chefs through parts of the hog, cook times, and the smoking process, including the flip, executed with Lew’s pitmaster Clayton Sanders. Viewers also got a good look at Sweet Lew’s renovated converted service station restaurant in Charlotte’s Belmont neighborhood.
• Lexington Barbecue, Nathan Monk, Rick Monk, and Keith “Bub” Wright introduce their family tradition – tomato, shoulders and slaw. Also, competitors and viewers were offered a contrast in the North Carolina barbecue restaurant … setting. “It’s like stepping back into the 50s … everything patina-ed…” Ouch. Lexington Barbecue has been at 100 Smokehouse Lane since the early 60s.
• Carolina BBQ Festival family – including some mic time for Bryan Furman and Matt Barry, but otherwise only glimpses of Matthew Register, Jake Wood, and Hungry Heroes founder Amanda Riggan (past festival participant). Comments from champion pitmaster and another past Carolina BBQ Festival participant Erica Roby season the judging segment of the show.
• Also Red Bridges Barbecue pitmaster and co-owner Natalie Ramsey, “Mama” Orchid Paulmeier founder of One Hot Mama’s in Hilton Head and Bluffton.
  

Other things I noticed in the barbecue episode of Top Chef Carolinas

Accents: When you hear Sam and the Monks speak, there’s a North Carolina familiarity I recognize. Immediately, in the relaxed down east drawl from Sam from his first moment on camera. The other side: “that sounds like Davidson County,” the wife says passing through the TV room. And it does, like her late grandparents and living uncles who spent life there.

Meat coma: Speaking of Davidson County, in some parts, the drive can grow a little drowsy, especially with a belly full of pulled pork and hushpuppies. Competitors appeared to sleep on the ride back to Mooresville, the “Piedmont” site of Splendor Pond, a wedding venue and events space about 50 miles from Lexington Barbecue.

Putting in pit time: The difficult all-night pace of whole hog cooking featured in the show. A late-night S’mores competition and cornhole kept chefs engaged into the night. However, by 2:10 a.m., “we are all starting to get a little tired.” Some went to bed. Others napped. Barbecue-experienced chefs thumped chests over their stamina.

Barbecue sides I didn’t see on Top Chef Carolinas

Outside an ongoing commentary from one competitor about Rodney Scott (more on that later), South Carolina barbecue was almost completely absent. Only a mention or two of mustard.

Unless I blinked, we didn’t get a “Let’s meet the judges!” – which might have offered nice context for who they are and why we see them smiling in the background. Instead, a parade of people marching up to the scene is the most camera time some participants receive.

That’s unfortunate. People ought to know why these people are here “judging” this barbecue competition.

And Jake tells the Raleigh News & Observer that when the episode recorded in September 2025, Lawrence Barbecue was in the midst of reopening in Cary. I’m he had a lot of fires burning at the time. He seemed to enjoy the experience, at least according to N&O’s Drew Jackson.

Amanda Riggan, has an interesting story, too.

But that’s TV. There’s only so much time available outside the real focus of the show: COMPETITION!

Speaking of competition …

Top Chef Carolinas Barbecue Competition

I’m assuming I won’t really … spoil anything for this audience:

• 2 teams of five chefs. Head-to-head match-ups on pork pieces: shoulder, ham, loin, belly, and chopped.
• Red team wins with an apparent 3-0 skunk out of the other team, no thanks to Gray team’s apparent ace-in-the-hole.
• Ace-in-the-hole Sieger Bayer is cast as the “whole hog expert.” He’s met or … worked with? … Rodney Scott (cue image from Scott’s in Hemingway). He talks a big game and guides the team to put the hog on the smoker and then add the hot coals. He also elects leave the tenderloin in the hog to preserve the whole hog tradition. Team Gray did the opposite in both instances. Of course.
• Bryan Furman: “I actually take the loin out before I put it in the smoker.” Good one, B.

This ends with Steiger drying out his tenderloins, setting his team up for defeat, and prompting his exit from the show. Cue the horns.

“I volunteered to cook the hog, chose the piece of meat,” he said on the way to Last Chance Kitchen (where he apparently something happened?! Maybe he wasn’t retained? That’s somebody else’s butt to smoke.)

What barbecue did the top chefs serve?

Top Chef Carolinas may be showing you the Sam Jones BBQ Carolina classic pulled pork, cornbread and slaw … but that’s not what these chefs are cooking. I think there’s room for serving up your best sandwich of pulled pork and slaw (East or West, your call), but it’s probably not Top Chef-worthy.

And here’s an interesting thing. It seems like the group of pitmaster judges, as a collective, largely voted toward the “less traditional” dishes in each pairing. That may have been influenced by a stinker on the other plate, but still, the pitmasters seemed to like a break from the norm.

Here’s what I scribbled down for menus and sequence. More on Top Chef Season 23 competitors with Carolina ties below.

Pork shoulder competition

Milk bread BBQ sandwich with smoked shoulder, Alabama white slaw and spicy pickles, and Western Carolina dipping sauce (Justin).

Winner-Red: South of the border bossam, vinaigrette with cabbage chow chow, herb salad (Sherry).

Pork loin competition

Pork loin with crispy ear terrine, carrot BBQ sauce in a mustard-style (Seiger).

Winner-Red: Smoked pork loin, pork floss, rice and East meets East sauce (Laurence)

Pork belly competition

This was a make-or-break battle between twin brothers. Team Gray’s brother bears a tattoo of a pig with bandages on the belly, his favorite part. What a coincidence – his Red team brother also decides to compete with pork belly.

Unanimous Winner-Red: Pork belly chichcarron, succotash & pimento cheese … foam? Despite the warning from the judge. (Johnathan)

Smoked barbecue pork belly, mac & cheese, collard greens and mustard onion. Team Red, no pig tattoo. (Brandon).

Pork ham competition

Winner-Gray: Ham steak, black-eyed pea puree, hush puppies, smoked grapes and pickled collard greens stems, (Jennifer).

Ham mojo, black bean puree, oranges and hush puppies, and Carolina white sauce (Anthony).

Chopped pork competition

Winner- Gray: Pig face stuffed tamale, curtido, ahogada barbecue sauce, Oscar.

NC chopped BBQ, papaya salad in a summer roll and fried spring roll, Duyen.

Sweet Lew’s hosts Top Chefs for Charlotte Watch Party

Sweet Lew’s Top Chef watch party featured competitors who appeared in the episode: Anthony Jones, executive chef at Marcus DC; Duyen Ha, executive chef at Jimmy Johnson’s Legacy Motor Club in Statesville; and Oscar Diaz, Durham restaurateur and two-time James Beard Foundation nominee.

Competitors recreated the dish served on the TV show, while Lewis and Charlotte-based Stagioni Chef Brittany Cochran (who was recently eliminated from the show) brought additional flavor.

Prior to Top Chef Carolinas episodes premiering earlier this spring, show hosts offered their input on “great barbecue” in the Carolinas. They also made stops at restaurants around the region, including Midwood Smokehouse, The Goodyear House, Leluia Hall and Red Bridges Barbecue Lodge.

After the episode’s Bravo debut, it is available via streaming on Peacock and other services.

Interviews with Top Chef Carolinas Barbecue Guest Judges

Many of the guest judges in Top Chef Carolinas’ barbecue episode are friends of The Low & Slow Barbecue Show and have appeared on the podcast – some multiple times.

• Lewis Donald, Sweet Lew’s, Charlotte | Podcasts: 2023, 2024 with Stan Hays, Operation BBQ Relief, 2025
• Matthew Register, Southern Smoke Barbecue, Garland, NC | Podcasts: 2023, 2023, 2025
• Matt Barry, Midwood Smokehouse, Charlotte+ | Podcasts: 2023, 2026
• Jake Wood, Lawrence Barbecue, Cary, NC | Podcast
• Bryan Furman, Bryan Furman Barbecue, PNW | Podcast
• Amanda Riggan, Hungry Heroes, Rock Hill, SC | Podcast