“M&K Barbecue and Country Cooking opened in 1990 by Myran and Kathy Thomas, is just what the name implies – good barbecue and country cooking. Myran is not a stranger to either. His father spent quite a few years cooking barbecue at the old Wink’s Bar-B-Que in Salisbury. Then he went to Concord and worked at Troutman’s Barbecue. Myran learned his cooking skills from his dad and learned them well. Until Myran and Kathy opened M&K, Myran was a long distance truck driver, which provided him with more than a nodding acquaintance with country cooking, good and otherwise.

On my latest visit to M&K, I found the barbecue was still excellent. The chopped barbecue was moderately coarse chopped and sauced in the kitchen with hot basting sauce. The ’cue had a good mix of outside brown and inside white. I could not see or taste any fat or skin. The chopped barbecue was very lean, moist and very, very tasty.  This little piggy had a rich roasted pork flavor and a smoky, woodsy, almost sweet taste. It’s wonderful ’cue.

The coarse-chopped barbecue was an offering of nice and tender hunky pieces that melt in your mouth. The outside brown and inside white gave this ’cue a scrumptious flavor and a nice texture. The flavor of the coarse-chopped ’cue is rich, robust, smoky, nutty, slightly sweet and so fresh. The sliced barbecue is Myran’s good ’cue at its best. These thick, tender slices of yummy roast pork are almost like a pig pickin’. It is lean with no fat and so tender you can cut it with a fork. This is pound-the-table good pork barbecue. Alternating bites of outside brown and inside white kept my taste buds dancing.”

Excerpts from The Best Tar Heel Barbecue Manteo to Murphy pages 96-97.