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Allman's still the (U.S.) 1 for barbecue• WEEKender restaurant review archive
For great barbecue and a look back at U.S. 1 the way it used to be, try Allman's Bar-B-Q.Date published: 12/20/2001 THE FREE LANCE-STAR Allman's Bar-B-Q on the U.S. 1 Bypass is a Fredericksburg landmark. Virginia Gov. Gerald L. Baliles called the business a "national treasure" in a 1986 speech to Mary Washington College students. The image of the unassuming brick building (with the bathrooms out back) has been put on T-shirts and sold on prints. And plenty of food writers have sung the restaurant's praises. This writer is about to do the same. Sitting down at Allman's is like sitting down in the past. Most of the U.S. 1 restaurants of its ilk are long gone, but here, the eight chrome bar stools, upholstered in genuine red vinyl, still spin. Tables for four, eight of them, are squeezed into the one-room establishment. Peek through the serving window in the back and you'll see the cook, Mary Brown--"Mom" to many locals--slicing, dicing and frying as she has since she took the job in 1960. The restaurant opened in 1954, and Brown still uses the original recipes. Barbecue-lovers are passion-ate about recipes. Talk barbecue and you'll hear about "North Carolina," "east North Carolina," "west North Caro-lina" and "southeast Virginia," to name a few. I've tried them all, and they don't beat Allman's. Here's why: First, there's the ambiance of the place--the ceramic pig paraphernalia, the calendars from other Fredericksburg businesses, the long-tusked wild boar's head that hangs on the wall and right now is wearing a Santa Claus hat. Second, there are the customers--hunters in feed caps, granddaughters taking granny out for a low-cost holiday lunch, Yankees who've heard tell of the place and veer off their I-95 trajectories to do some anthropological and culinary research. Third, and most importantly, there's the short menu of simple food cooked up right--every time. The star of this show is the pig. Lean pork shoulder is cooked slow, sliced into toothsome chunks or chopped extra fine. Don't expect the tender meat to be dressed with tomato or vinegar when it arrives on the plate. The sauce is in a plastic squirt bottle on the table--you put on as much or as little of the sweet, viscous, vinegary sauce as you like.
Date published: 12/20/2001
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