[Rail Paul]

John T. Edge has an article in the NY Times about this old time bbq pit in central SC. Sounds like the real deal.

As the men struggled, the 150 pounds of dead weight torqued the makeshift wire cage. When the carcass landed, skin-side down, on the metal grid of a recently fired pit, skeins of grease trailed down the pig’s flanks, and the smoldering oak and hickory coals beneath hissed and flared.

“I cooked my first one when I was 11,” Mr. Scott said, as he seasoned the pig with lashings of salt, red pepper, black pepper and Accent, a flavor enhancer made with MSG.

Working a long-handled mop, he drenched the pig in a vinegar sauce of a similar peppery composition. “You’ve got to always be on point, when you’re cooking this way,” he said.

Cooking this way isn’t done much any more. This place, a couple of hours northwest of Charleston, as well as the Scott family approach to slow-smoking whole hogs over hardwood coals, appears to be vestigial.

For aficionados in search of ever-elusive authenticity, Scott’s offers all the rural tropes of a signal American barbecue joint. The main building is tin-roofed and time-worn. Dogs loll in the parking lot, where old shopping carts are stacked with watermelons in the summer, sweet potatoes in the fall. On church pews under the eave, locals visit with neighbors and barbecue pilgrims commune with foam clamshells stuffed with pulled pork, $8 a pound.

The cookery is simple, but the processes used by the Scott family are not.

NYT

2734 Hemingway Hwy
Hemingway, SC 29554
(843) 558-0134

[Suzanne F]

I get nervous when I read articles in The Times about places like that. Nervous that your average New York food lover (whatever that means) will get the idea that that's all you need to do and assume that it is not a confluence of sourcing (sorry, Stone), product, knowledge, equipment, skill, and most important, time. So now people will demand that folks from Scott's be included in next year's BABBQBP and the next thing you know they'll move to Connecticut like Ed Wilson and make stuff from other regions, using (perhaps) local ingredients. And the things that made it what it was will be lost.

[Rail Paul]

I think there's always a danger that being anointed by the NYT raises the seller's expectations. Raising prices minutes after your three star review hits the news stand, etc.

There are some places (Lexington #1) where success hasn't changed much of anything, as far as I can tell. And, others like Allen's, where success has changed everything. Complex of buildings, a half dozen 40 foot trailers out back, hundred plus employees.

I suspect if somebody has the urge to cash in on 40 years of hard work, most folks won't begrudge them some enjoyment. Whether New Yorkers will wait a half hour for their bbq to be ready, that I doubt.

From the article:

His son echoed his feelings. “People keep talking about how old-fashioned what we do is,” he said. “Old-fashioned was working the farm as a boy. I hated those long hours, that hot sun. Compared to that, this is a slow roll.”