Payne’s

When you order a pork shoulder sandwich at Payne’s, a sufficient amount of meat is heated then chopped on a wooden block and piled on a bun mixed with hot or mild sauce. Atop the pork goes a layer of pickly-sweet slaw. Available in normal and jumbo sizes, the sandwich is wrapped in wax paper and held together with toothpicks. It is a mess, well-nigh impossible to eat like a normal sandwich by picking it up in one or two hands and bringing the whole thing to your mouth. You can try that, but vast amounts of pork will fall out and sauce will spill and you will eventually be picking up pieces of meat, slaw, and even sauce-sopped bun with two fingers as if they were dainty-sized, albeit outrageously messy, petits-fours.

Beyond the pork barbecue sandwich, the menu is a short list of smokehouse classics: beef barbecue, sausages, rib tips, and boloney, with sides of beans, slaw, and French fries. In our experience none of these is stellar; but the pig sandwich is.