Center Point's sauce lights the way

Center Point's sauce lights the way

By Will Ayers

The pursuit of barbecue yearns toward an exalted ideal. As a surfer hunts for a glassy-faced monster break or the fly-fisherman seeks a jewel-skinned trout, the pilgrim on the pork trail wanders in search of the ideal restaurant, whose meat, sauce, side dishes and atmosphere exist in blessed symmetry and symbiosis: the perfect barbecue experience.

I consider myself very fortunate to walk this road as a paid representative of the dining public, and so I alighted recently at Center Point Pit Barbecue in Hendersonville, widely known for its ways with smoke and meat, to answer the call. The celebrities whose photographs grace the restaurant's walls seem to think a lot of the place, or at least the people the rich and famous pay to sign those photos in black Sharpie do. Whatever.