{Pete Jones, the long-time owner of Skylight Inn died in 2006. Despite the
fact I didn't like his barbecue, he will be sorely missed as a honorable man
and as a fixture if not institution of Eastern North Carolina-Style barbecue.
I didn't place this review in my "boneyard" of BBQ places past since
they're still open and serving barbecue and who knows, if I'm ever in Ayden
sometime in the future, I just might stop in and try the new owner's new
version of their 'cue.}
Review of Pete Jone's Skylight Inn BBQ
Ayden, NC
by
H. Kent Craig ©2000
Do you know what a cracklin', or "crackling" is?
Even though I'm a porcine product profligater, even though
I had (accidentally) eaten them before when mixed in with
cornbread cakes that my Grandmother Craig up in Wilkes
County N.C. used to make when I was a kid, before I wrote
this review I called the North Carolina Pork Producers
Council for a definition, just to be sure. According to an
unnamed representative of NCPPC, a "crackling" is that part
of the pig where the fat is attached to skin, and is
normally cut in strips from such then into much smaller
pieces, then boiled, then added to other foods as a
flavoring agent. To me, though, they make whatever they're
added to have an almost-raw-petroleum taste, so you can
guess what's coming next in this review.
Even though Pete Jone's Skylight Inn BBQ in Ayden NC has
probably the longest unbroken history of any
Eastern-NC-Style BBQ restaurant, what we know as such
having been served on the very site where his modern
restaurant now stands since at least the 1830's, Mr. Jones
adds cracklings to both his barbeque and his cornbread,
which is the only sidedish he offers. I've eaten there less
than a handful of times over the years, Ayden is a small
town not normally on your way to or from most anywhere else
"Down East", and each time it's been consistent,
consistently full of cracklings, that is. So, last time a
few months ago, I took my wife with me, who actually enjoys
the taste of cracklings (many people do!), to get a
less-biased perspective on the overall quality of Pete
Jone's BBQ. In a nutshell, she pronounced "average at
best", with a little too much fat in it, perhaps slightly
undercooked, but at least with no pink showing, somewhat
stringy, more whole-hog in its fine texture with big pieces
of chewy fat than what's considered to be normally "whole
hog-style". So, using her no-cracklings-non-bias enjoyment
of eating cracklings-added dishes as a touchstone, I'm
giving Pete Jone's Skylight Inn BBQ in Ayden NC a very
generous two pig rating on a scale of 1-4 pigs.
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