"north carolina" news and stories

Until recently, if you wanted to slurp some of Triangle Brewing's spiced, thirst-quenching White Ale, you had to belly up to a bar and order a pint of the draft-only beer. But now, the Durham, North Carolina, brewery has taken a bold step by packaging its brews in cans, not bottles. Are the owners bonkers?

"There's a huge misperception that bottles are better than cans," cofounder Andy Miller told The News & Observer. For good reason. Cans have long been the domain of Budweiser, Miller and other big name brews that many beer connoisseurs consider dishwater drinks, leaving bottles to flavorful craft beer. It's a classier looking package, but as we've learned time and again: looks aren't everything. Aluminum cans offer numerous advantages over bottles. For starters, cans are better at warding off beer's biggest killers: light and oxygen, which make brews taste and smell like road-kill skunk. And that metallic tang that once plagued canned suds? Gone, thanks to flavor-saving linings.

If a tantalizing photo of a juicy, well-peppered steak isn't enough to entice you (they don't call it 'food porn' for nothing), perhaps your sense of smell will make your mouth water?

A billboard for the Bloom Grocery chain in central North Carolina is testing this form of temptation by not only featuring a larger-than-life photo of a perfectly pink steak, but also pumping out the smell of black pepper and charcoal.

Before you start thinking, "Fire hazard!," note that these scents are actually manufactured by the company ScentAir Technologies, who typically create custom fragrances for places like casinos and hotels.

Read about the technology behind this olfactory-enhanced advertising campaign and find out how long drivers on N.C. 150 will be seduced by the smell of grilling over at HuffPost Food.

Self-described "food-centric mountain irregular" Mark Rosenstein moved temporarily to the Great Smoky Mountains at age 19 to work at a restaurant. Thirty-eight years later, he's still there -- and it's easy to understand why.

Long before locavores and sustainable sourcing, the food here relied entirely on farm-fresh or foraged ingredients. Habits originally developed through the poverty-long endemic to the area are now cherished by ingredient-obsessed foodies like Rosenstein.

"It's difficult to farm here, it's so up and down, the weather can change and get extreme, soils are not as fertile." Thanks to the rugged, sometimes difficult terrain, he says, big farms didn't evolve; rather, land workers were cottage industry all-rounders. "At 50 acres or less, people tended to be very independent and the farm was much more diverse – a pig or two, chickens, making their own sorghum. And today, we're sort of in a revival of that," he notes.

Read our "only in North Carolina" list after the jump...

The maker of Castle Sauce, a distinctively tangy steak sauce -- fashioned after a beloved local condiment that vanished from the Greensboro, N.C. scene in 2007 -- believes he's come even closer to replicating the original product.

Relying on chemical analysis and "a little bit of common sense," Dwight Thomas recently revised his recipe to include a still-secret missing ingredient. "We now have it pretty much dead-on," Thomas says. "I had forty-some people at my house and only one could tell the difference."

Thomas' guests probably weren't just being polite. Greensboro residents are connoisseurs of the ketchupy, mustardy blend that got its start in 1929 at the Boar and Castle, a burger joint popular with teenagers. "It was a necking place, to be honest," Thomas recalls. "If you got there in time to get a spot under the wisteria, you spent all night there."

This week North Carolina became the latest state to consider relaxing its restrictions on animals in restaurants.

"The current law does not allow animals," explains North Carolina Division of Environmental Health public information officer Laura Leonard, who yesterday participated in a public hearing on a rule revision that would permit pets on patios.

According to Leonard, the lone citizen who spoke at the hearing felt the new rule – which prohibits animals from entering the indoor dining area, eating table scraps, licking utensils and nuzzling with employees – was overly strict. But many North Carolinians aren't so inclined to share their restaurants with feathered and furry diners: The News & Observer reports hundreds of people have complained to the state that dogs would bring germs, fleas and noise to their favorite eateries.

The new rule would leave it up to restaurant owners to decide which animals – if any -- to welcome in their al fresco sections.