Rodney Scott's BBQ

Rodney Scott's BBQ on King Street in Charleston is the flagship restaurant of one of the most celebrated pitmasters in American barbecue history. Rodney Scott, who grew up cooking whole hogs at his family's Scott's Bar-B-Que in Hemingway, South Carolina, received the James Beard Award for Best Chef Southeast in 2018 — one of the highest individual culinary honors in the country — in recognition of a barbecue tradition that has sustained the South Carolina Lowcountry for generations. The Charleston restaurant burns wood overnight to cook whole hogs low and slow, pulling the meat the following day into a combination of crispy skin, smoky rendered fat, and moist interior flesh that defines the whole-hog barbecue tradition of South Carolina's coastal plain. The vinegar-and-pepper sauce applied to the meat is the distinctive marker of the South Carolina coastal style, sharply acidic and briny in a way that cuts through the richness of the pork and reflects the region's culinary separation from the mustard-based sauces of the Midlands or the tomato preparations common in other parts of the South. BBQ hash and rice — a South Carolina-specific dish made from the offcuts of the pig cooked into a savory stew served over white rice — is available at Rodney Scott's and represents a culinary form rarely found outside the Palmetto State. Sides include coleslaw, baked beans, and cornbread. The atmosphere is unambiguously casual: counter service, picnic-table seating, the persistent smell of wood smoke in the air, and a line that stretches regularly toward the door. No reservations, no dress code, no ceremony.