Last month, I indulged on another barbecue road trip. I’ll relate the details in the next chapter, and use the space here to talk about my experience at one of South Carolina’s best-known barbecue joints, Maurice’s. It’s a pretty large family-owned business, similar in size and local impact to, say, Country’s Barbecue in Columbus and eastern Alabama, Buddy’s in Knoxville, or Golden Rule in Birmingham. The business as we can perceive it today dates back to 1953, but it claims a somewhat older lineage on the strength of its bottled sauce, which the current owners’ grandfather, Joe Bessinger, began selling in a restaurant in Holly Hill SC in 1939. (A restaurant called Villa Tronco, also in Columbia, claims to be the oldest continually-operating one in the state, and was founded in 1940.) Continue reading “Maurice’s Piggie Park Barbecue, West Columbia SC”
Tag: barbecue
Hwy 58 BBQ, Chattanooga TN
On the Sunday morning of our trip, our son got us up bright and early and we had a light breakfast in the hotel, and then took a relaxed and fun drive through middle Tennessee to get to Chattanooga for lunch. Instead of going the usual way (I-24), since we were a little east of Nashville on I-40, we just continued that way for 40-odd miles, and then, around Cookeville, picked up TN-111 and went south, up and down over a couple of mountains. We’d seen the southern edge of this road once before, in the summer of 2010, when we visited Fall Creek Falls State Park. It’s all very, very pretty. Continue reading “Hwy 58 BBQ, Chattanooga TN”
Snow White Drive-In, Lebanon TN
On my Nashville to-do list: visit a whole lot more hot chicken places, visit a whole lot more barbecue places, and see Brooke and Matt get married. We marked off one of the three on this trip, and slightly dented the very, very long barbecue to-do list. Continue reading “Snow White Drive-In, Lebanon TN”
Poole’s Bar-B-Q, East Ellijay GA (take two)
For a few years now, I’ve been telling people that Poole’s serves up the best barbecue on the I-575 / GA-515 corridor through north Georgia. In today’s chapter, unfortunately, honesty demands that I mention that they had a little stumble with me. Continue reading “Poole’s Bar-B-Q, East Ellijay GA (take two)”
Joe’s BBQ, Blue Ridge GA
Aha! I knew that TripAdvisor list would demonstrate a hiccup eventually!
You remember all the hoopla, right? TripAdvisor said, correctly, that Georgia was the best state in the nation for barbecue, and that we were home to three of the ten best barbecue joints in the country. Texas and North Carolina, after collecting their jaws from sawdust-covered floors, bitched and bellyached and those of us who know better smiled and said, “Darn right.” Then Marie and I went to Wylie’s Championship BBQ in Savannah, one of those three prize-winners, and just got knocked off our chairs by how good it was. Continue reading “Joe’s BBQ, Blue Ridge GA”
Sam’s BBQ-1 West, Marietta GA
A few Saturdays ago, I took my son out to west Cobb to look for the long-rumored second location of Sam’s BBQ. I had heard that it was out here somewhere, but had never spotted it whenever I was driving around this area. It turns out that the restaurant has absolutely no street visibility at all. If you can find The Avenues at West Cobb (home of Otter’s Chicken), then Sam’s is literally across the street in a shopping mall with a Kroger and a Belk, but you cannot see it from GA-120. Continue reading “Sam’s BBQ-1 West, Marietta GA”
Blind Pig BBQ, Jackson GA
You know, any excuse for a celebration works for me, which is why we love hitting some kind of centennial – any kind will do. But we’re especially pleased to announce that, with today’s chapter, we have written about 300 barbecue restaurants in the southeast. Two or three of our peers and friends in the hobby have done more, but I’d like to think that we’re in a pretty small group to have visited and documented so many. And through the end of the year, we hope to add more than a dozen to that total. There are always more places to find and we can’t wait to sample them! Continue reading “Blind Pig BBQ, Jackson GA”
Marie, Let's Eat! 