Food and Wine released a package of stories celebrating barbecue throughout the country last week. As part the spread, the magazine’s David Landsel remarked upon the top barbecue restaurants in every state.
In South Carolina, much of Landsel’s evaluations found the Midlands reigning supreme.
“To this day, Midlands style still belongs mostly to the place of its birth … I get it, aesthetics matter, but once you taste the stuff ... How are we not all in love, by now?” Landsel writes.
He specifically name-checks numerous joints that Columbia barbecue aficionados and neophytes alike will recognize. Big T’s Bar-B-Q, True BBQ and Hites BBQ are all mentioned in the writeup as local greats.
“At Big T Bar-B-Q in Gadsden, they’ll do a hash and rice dinner with two sides for less than $8,” Landsel shares. “West Columbia, just over the Congaree River from the state capital, is home to two essential hash stops, True BBQ and Hite’s BBQ.”
Outside of the Midlands, he cites popular stops Midway BBQ in Union County, Sweatman’s Barbecue in Holly Hill, along with the much acclaimed Rodney Scott’s BBQ and Lewis Barbecue, both in Charleston.
Landsel particularly zeroes in on what is maybe the Palmetto State’s most notable contribution to barbecue’s menagerie of traditions: hash.
“I could eat this as a meal over rice, and have done,” Landsel writes. “This is history you can taste, nose-to-tail cooking before that became a trend. … Hash, you will find, is never the same thing twice, not completely. It is popular enough in the places still around to serve it that you’ll find them using lots of pork shoulder, or even ham. Whatever the process, the end result is the same — hearty, soulful comfort cooking, a window to the past.”
Landsel’s praise of many Midlands establishments joins other national plaudits received in recent years. In 2019, Southern Living‘s roving barbecue writer Robert Moss ranked West Columbia’s Hite’s No. 27 in a Top 50 ranking of Southern barbecue joints. Moss ranked the Charleston location of Home Team BBQ No. 35; the brand opened a location in Columbia’s Five Points last year.
As for locals’ tastes, Free Times readers voted Home Team the top barbecue restaurant in this year’s Best of Columbia reader’s poll.
