JUNE 2019 // CHARLOTTE 65
(Left) Sweet Lew’s smoked
chicken with mac and cheese,
collard greens, and cornbread.
(Right) Smoked beef brisket
with pickles, boiled potatoes,
and baked beans.Sweet Lew’s
hushpuppies
are sold only
on Fridays.YOU COULD CALL SWEET LEW’S, which
opened last year in the Belmont neighbor-
hood, a “restaurant,” which it technically is.
That wouldn’t be an unreasonable assumption,
considering co-owner Lewis Donald was once
the executive chef at upscale Reid’s Fine Foods
in Myers Park.
He would prefer you not do that. “It’s not a
restaurant,” he says. “It’s a barbecue shack.”
Sweet Lew’s occupies a compact lot in an
urban and rapidly gentrifying neighborhood,
but Donald and business partner Laura Furman
Grice modeled it a er back-country roadside
barbecue joints on rural highways. “Keep It
Simple, Stupid,” the website reads. “The core
of our menu stays the same every day.”
Sweet Lew’s motto is “Cooked With Wood,”
which sounds oddly matter-of-fact unless you
understand that’s what distinguishes genuine
Carolina barbecue from its many imitators.
The 450-square-foot smokehouse behind
the establishment smells of pecan, peach, and
hickory. Diners wedge themselves in at the
handful of inside tables or the picnic tables on
the cement patio out front. Another characteris-
tic Sweet Lew’s deliberately shares with its back-
roads forebears: It serves meat until it runs out.
“We don’t want to serve day-old barbecue,”
Donald says. “That’s the bottom line ... I think
if you’re not running out, you’re not serving a
quality product.”
Sweet Lew’s barbecue is Lexington-style, pork
shoulder only, seasoned with only salt and pep-
per, and smoked for 10 to 12 hours. Once it’s
served, you can add any of an array of sauces—
eastern North Carolina vinegar, Lexington-style
red dip, South Carolina mustard, even mayon-
naise-based Alabama white, one of Donald’s
few deviations from tradition (and taste).
Sides include slaw, collards, baked beans,
boiled peanuts, and on Fridays only, hushpup-
pies. Aside from its absence of squirrel meat,Sweet Lew’s Brunswick stew is about as tradi-
tional as it comes, with smoked chicken, pork,
lima beans, corn, and tomato.
Donald and Grice understand the perception
that greets any newcomer with money who
invests in Belmont, which until recently was
one of Charlotte’s poorest and highest-crime
neighborhoods. That’s why they’re trying espe-
cially hard to make Sweet Lew’s a part of the
neighborhood, not just a business that happens
to occupy space in it. He employs Belmont high
school kids, who bene¡ t from the stability of an
a er-school job. “Three out of six of my employ-
ees walk to work,” Donald says.
His goal, he says, is to establish a “genera-
tional” business in Belmont, somewhere that
can welcome patrons and families, whether
they’re tenured or new. Slow-cooking the pork
shoulder out back takes time, he knows. So
does making your new shack inspired by old
ways part of an old community. —B.J.SWEET LEW’S BBQ
923 BELMONT AVE., 980¥224¥7584, SWEETLEWSBBQ.COMEST.^2018