And, of course, loose women… just kidding.
There’s now a Hall’s Chophouse in Columbia, so that should answer your question
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There are a bunch of pretty cool sports bars in downtown Columbia. If you google it you will see several come up if that is the area you are staying.
Most of my trips to Columbia have been in and out the same day. Several years ago I stayed the night the Friday before a game and ate Carolina BBQ for the first time. I don’t remember the name of the restaurant, unfortunately, but that’s a meal you don’t forget.
Is that because it was unforgettably delicious or because it was inedible? I haven’t eaten any Carolina BBQ, but I’ve heard and read several people mention how awful it is.
Thanks to all. We do get a hankering for SC mustard based BBQ sauce- living right here on the escarpment in WNC. We’ll be looking for “pulled chicken”, albeit with SC BBQ sauce. Hey, honor the vanquished.
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Don’t fly home immediately! get down to Charleston. One of the great cities of the world. Great food around every corner. Literally. Its like an American version of Paris in that way. Bad restaurants have a hard time surviving. Oh…there is fast food of course. And some dives. But even the dives tend to have good food.
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agree with this…and I am a vegetarian. The folks that run Halls also run Slightly North of Broad and some others here in Charleston.
Hall’s is awesome.
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I love South Carolina BBQ. Of coarse I love all BBQ….
I don’t remember it being good or bad, just unique.
Carolina BBQ sauce is mustard based. Very very good too.
Martin’s BBQ here in Mt. Juliet, Tennessee is so-so IMO but one of their choice
sauces is a Carolina sauce that’s pretty tasty. The mustard base gives it a unique
flavor. It’s pretty good.
He opened a restaurant here in Charleston. Not bad, but not the best BBQ in town
I usually flew in and out of Charlotte. I asked the bell captain about BBQ and he said I’ll take you and pick you up in the courtesy van. Took me to a biker bar. He said sit at the bar and get the sampler platter. It was all sorts of their BBQ. It was Carolina BBQ for sure. Really good. I cannot recall the name. The beer was cold and the food was great and the bartender was good too.
I like Arkansas Tn Georgia BBQ. Do not like Texas as they prefer beef over pork and I do not care for Carolina BBQ. I lived in NY for 7 years and at that time no BBQ around there.
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There are Eastern and Western styles of North Carolina bbq. Both pork. Usually chopped whole hog in the East, pork butt in the West. The East has a vinegar sauce, the West adds a bit of ketchup
to the vinegar. No ketchup in the East because way back when bbq started they thought tomatoes were poisonous.
I say this because you said you went to Charlotte. Which is not a big bbq location in North Carolina, but it is in North Carolina.
South Carolina also has pig, but with a mustard sauce. I also recommend bbq hash, a South Carolina specialty.
There are lots of places to get bbq in South Carolina, but there is a big chain called Maurice’s or Bessinger’s. Interesting story if you look it up. The owner, Maurice Bessinger, was crazy. And infamously racist. So much so that his own family disowned him. He’s long dead, I think the places are ok now.
Btw, my brother, raised in Arkansas, now in Texas, hates Carolina bbq of any kind. Although I prefer Arkansas style, I disagree. The best Carolina bbq, pig cooked slowly over real wood, is very good, smoky, moist, different but definitely worth trying. The worst Carolina bbq, cooked with gas, is the worst bbq of any kind I’ve had, it tastes like you boiled pig, no flavor, and then instead of chopping it put it in a blender.
I lived in Winston-Salem NC for 3 long years, hated the BBQ there, vinegar-based sauce for sure. They put it all over the coleslaw as well. Awful.
There aren’t any good bbq places in Winston-Salem that I know of. Or Greensboro. There are good ones in Lexington, around Greenville, and even Asheville. But I tried to take my brother to a really good one, and he thought even the really good ones were really bad. I get it, it’s not the barbecue he and I grew up with in Arkansas.
And yes, they have a lot of vinegar-based slaw around here. But some places do have mayonnaise based. And some Western places even give you the choice of red vinegar bbq sauce based coleslaw.
I found some good BBQ in Raliegh-Durham but don’t remember the name of the place. Never found anywhere in Winston-Salem that had BBQ that I’d eat.
There were some really good places to eat there but not BBQ. Had to watch them with the slaw, they’d put it on everything, including my burger.
I grew up in AR but lived most of my adult life in Texas so I’m definitely partial to that. I do agree with another poster that TX BBQ doesn’t usually include a lot of pork, you can get some great ribs and occasionally good pulled pork, but it’s not common.
Had a hard time finding really good BBQ when I was living in San Diego but there are a couple that were good. One of them, ironically, was named Texas BBQ.
Although it is not a prime barbecue area, Raleigh-Durham does have some very good Carolina barbecue places. Some even do a great job with Texas-style beef brisket.
Btw, to get back to the subject of food at away games, in addition to South Carolina style barbecue in Columbia, I have gotten some very good barbecue ribs in Tuscaloosa (although I am not a fan on their bbq chicken with a mayonnaise based sauce) and decent bbq at The Little Dooey in Starkville. And of course beef bbq when we played in Austin.