5 Reasons to Eat Local in Lincolnton, NC

Lincolnton eats better than a county seat of its size has any obligation to. Part of that is barbecue with a genuine regional identity, part of it is a downtown that filled up with independents rather than chains, and part of it is that some of the best things here are producers rather than restaurants: a dairy, a butcher, a vineyard. If you are coming over from Denver, it is about fifteen miles west on NC-150. Here is where we would send you.

The barbecue is Piedmont barbecue, and it is specific

North Carolina barbecue is not one thing. East of Raleigh the sauce is thin vinegar and pepper and the whole hog goes on. Here in the Piedmont it is pork shoulder and the sauce carries tomato alongside the vinegar, and Lincolnton sits squarely in that second tradition. Knowing which one you are eating is half the pleasure.

Bar-B-Q King on East Main has been at it since 1971. The shoulders go on hickory for something like six hours, get hand-pulled and hand-chopped fresh each day, and the sauce is that vinegar-and-tomato blend. Staff are in at six in the morning, it is cash or check only, it closes on Sundays, and when the day's barbecue is gone it is gone. There is Brunswick stew and hand-breaded onion rings too, and a burger-and-grilled-ham combination for anyone who cannot choose.

Out on NC-27 a couple of miles west of town, Home Place has been family owned since 1986, opens at seven in the morning, and runs hickory-smoked barbecue alongside daily specials. Between the two of them you can settle the argument about which you prefer without leaving the county.

A downtown of independents, not a food court

Local Roots and Provisions on East Water Street is the ambitious one: a restaurant, bar, and market doing chef-driven Southern food, opened by a local couple in a historic downtown building that the town put out to tender specifically to get a restaurant into it. It names its suppliers on the menu, including a butcher two streets away, which tells you most of what you need to know about the place.

Court Street Grille has been on Court Square since 2003 doing American and Italian plates. GoodWood Pizzeria on North Aspen builds nine-inch thin-crust pizzas by hand and fires them in a wood oven running at around nine hundred degrees, in full view, with a covered patio out back that seats around fifty. City Lunch has held its corner of Court Square since 1932, screen door included, and still does meat-and-three, hot dogs, and burgers.

The range is wider than you would guess. Miami Fusion Cafe out on East Main does Cuban food with breakfast served into the late morning, Nicaraguan specials at weekends including gallo pinto, and chicken and waffles with guava honey. Carolina Steak and Rib covers the steakhouse end of East Main. The Wooden Spoon downtown does scratch Southern breakfast and lunch on short weekday hours, so check before you set out.

Some of the best food here is made rather than served

Riverbend Creamery sits on Ritchie Road in the bend of the South Fork River, a fifth-generation family dairy running a grass-fed Jersey herd. The farm store sells hand-dipped cones, pints, and quarts of its own ice cream alongside all-Jersey A2 milk, and the farm offers tours. Ice cream eaten in sight of the cows that produced it is a different proposition from ice cream out of a freezer cabinet.

The Meating Place on East Main is a butcher shop and deli with made-to-order sandwiches, Certified Angus Beef from a named Carolina farm, and Amish deli products. It supplies some of the restaurants in town, which is why you keep seeing it on menus.

For the sweet end, LKN Cheesecakery on Court Square has been specialising in cheesecake since 2015, having started in the owner's home kitchen, and also turns out creme brulee, cannoli, and cakes with sugar-free, vegan, and gluten-free options. There is a Denver location as well, which is handy if you would rather not drive. Sweet Side Bakery and Cafe on South Academy makes scratch doughnuts on a twenty-four-hour dough process, and Scoop's by the Square on North Aspen does ice cream and mason-jar milkshakes.

Drinks: a taproom, a gluten-free brewery, and a fruit winery

Untapped Territory on East Water Street is the downtown anchor: a family-run taproom, bottle shop, and wine and spirits retailer with twenty-one rotating drafts weighted toward Carolina breweries and vineyards, plus food trucks and a fire pit out back.

Worth being straight about the brewing picture, because it has moved. The county's first microbrewery opened in the old Eureka cotton mill on East Water Street and closed again after about five years, and the mill building has since sold and is being converted into a restaurant and bar. So the downtown drinks scene runs through a taproom and bottle shop rather than a brewery for the moment, and the mill is one to watch rather than one to visit.

Three Sons Brewing on Performance Drive is the genuinely unusual one: a dedicated gluten-free brewery. No gluten-containing ingredients come into the building at all, the beer is brewed from rice, corn, buckwheat, and oats, and only its own beer and seltzer go on the taps so the lines cannot be cross-contaminated. It exists because one of the owners developed a gluten intolerance, and it is named for their three sons. If you have spent years being handed the one dusty bottle of gluten-free lager, this is a different experience.

Out west in Vale, still in Lincoln County, WoodMill Winery planted its vineyard in 2001 and now runs around fifteen acres of vines making Southern fruit wines: muscadine and scuppernong alongside blueberry, blackberry, strawberry, apple, and Concord, sweet through to dry, all made on site. Tastings run most of the week, and there is a grape stomp and a handful of seasonal festivals through the year. There is no cidery in the county, in case you were wondering.

Markets, and the festival the county grows the apples for

The Lincoln County Farmers Market runs on Tuesday mornings behind the Citizens Center just off West Water Street in Lincolnton, and there is a Saturday morning market at the Denver site on NC-16 Business, which is the more convenient of the two if you are on the lake side of the county.

The Lincoln County Apple Festival takes over West Main Street on the third Saturday in October and has been running since 1972, when a county extension agent came back from a strawberry festival in the east of the state with an idea. It now fills downtown with two hundred and fifty or more craft and food vendors, two stages, and a working farmers market, and the food to look for is apple pie, whole and fried.

What makes it more than a theme is that the apples are real: the festival's own grower list includes a Lincoln County orchard in Vale alongside orchards from the next county over. Admission is free and the streets close to traffic.

Through the warmer months, Alive After Five brings free concerts, a car show, food vendors, and a beer wagon to the hundred and two hundred blocks of East Main on Thursday evenings from May into September. The year finishes with the Apple Drop on New Year's Eve, where the apple comes down early in the evening rather than at midnight, which is a kindness.

If you are coming from the lake

Lincolnton is about fifteen miles and twenty-odd minutes west of Denver on NC-150, and a little under forty miles from Charlotte, so it works as an easy evening out from anywhere on the west shore. Our round-up of eating local in Denver covers the nearer end of the same road if you would rather stay close to home.

A practical note: several of the places above keep short or unusual hours, and the barbecue genuinely does sell out. Check before you drive. And if you are weighing up this side of the county as somewhere to live rather than somewhere to eat, our Lincolnton listings and our Denver pages cover both ends of NC-150.

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