“This dog-walking thing is just an excuse for you to eat barbecue, isn’t it?” my wife asked recently.
That is a scurrilous, slanderous lie! How dare she. Granted, we had eaten a lot of barbecue, but consuming perfectly smoked, delightfully seasoned and lovingly sauced pork just happens to be a fringe benefit of my 46-county dog-walking trek. And, I mean, since we were in the area and had to mark Williamsburg off the list anyway, what kind of sense would it make NOT to eat Scott’s Barbecue? What other dining options would one likely find in the greater Hemingway community? Before going to downtown Hemingway for our actual walk, we did make our way to Scott’s. This would mark my second visit to the original Scott’s location. The first was a fairly memorable experience about six years ago. The drive took us past "Henry's Starlight Lounge" which stood out a bit because Henry actually had a portrait of himself on the sign atop the building. I guess that was there in case you missed the same picture which just so happened to adorn "Henry's Restaurant" conveniently located in the same elongated building as Henry's Starlight Lounge. Sadly, Henry’s appeared to have gone the way of the Dodo, with the building looking unoccupied as we drove by on our recent trip. I must admit that my wife wasn't entirely sold on the experience on our first trip. I'm a barbecue nerd that was eating up every second of the journey, but she didn't fully understand why you'd drive an hour to eat at this one little place when other options were closer. Lots of people would hold the same view. By her own admission, she's also a "city girl" who mostly accustomed to eating in establishments with carpets and table cloths. I, on the other hand, enjoyed more meals than I can count at Babe's Cafe in Santuc. Babe's shared a tiny brick building with Joe's Store, was barely big enough to hold the three tables it had and was staffed by a verbose, six-foot-something, 300-some-odd-pound fellow named Babe who would occasionally tell patrons he wasn't going to cook whatever it was they'd ordered. "I ain't cooking any damn onion rings today," he once growled at me as he gave me French fries instead of what I'd actually asked for. Babe was hysterically funny (he was buddies with Jerry Clower) and could somehow make fried bologna sandwiches taste like filet mignon. He pulled food off that little grill that had almost no equal. You are rarely going to find those kinds of characters and that amazing level of cuisine at a generic chain place, I have learned. On that first trip, there were actually two signs out front. One said "Scott's Pitt Cook B.B.Q." and listed a phone number. There were no portrait-style pictures of the proprietor, but there was a little cartoon pig over a fire. The other read "Scott's Variety." Both signs were accurate at the time. There were shelves stocked with some of the normal country store merchandise you'd find anywhere, but there were also bottles of their sauce and bags of homemade pork skins (which are also called nabs) on either side of the three dining tables in the building. There has been a significant change since last I visited, and not one that was desired. The old location burned down a few years ago. Scott went on a “chef in residence” tour to raise money for the rebuild and did so. The lone sign now said “Pit Cook…Scott’s BBQ. The stuff inside now not related to eating pig meat is pretty minimal. The menu is much the same starting off big, listing the price for a whole smoked hog and the cost if you bring in a hog you'd like them to smoke for you before getting down to a sandwich or sandwich plate. They don't have a lot of sides to pick from and I like it that way. Sometimes, when barbecue joints try to cook everything under the sun, they lose focus on what's really important, which is the barbecue. Pick a few things and do them well. My plate came with some slaw, beans, barbecue and two pieces of white bread. I also got a bag of nabs. I asked for tea and was told they didn't have any. Whatever you want to drink, you go to the cooler in the back and pull out yourself. That was a reminder that you weren’t really in a restaurant…in was a general store that happened to serve amazing barbecue alongside quarts of motor oil and fishing lures. Part of what makes the barbecue at Scott's different is that he only cooks whole hogs. Many barbecue places use only pork butts to make barbecue, but with whole hog, you're getting pork butt and loin and rib meat and ham too. I could distinctly taste the unctuous, fatty awesomeness of some pork belly in one bite. My wife and mother-in-law were similarly impressed. On that first visit, we actually met Rodney Scott, the establishment's renowned pitmaster. Among barbecue and foodie types, he's pretty famous, but was down-to-earth and nice as could be. Scott, as I suppose we can all be at times, is totally attuned to his profession. When we told him where we were from, he related to us in terms of barbecue. "Oh, up there in mustard sauce territory," he said. I told him that was correct. I also told him I am a strict mustard-based sauce disciple (a phrase that probably has not appeared in print many times) and will not be swayed from that view, though I conceded that his spicy vinegary sauce came closer to converting me than any other I'd had. We talked about barbecue for a few minutes. I asked him about a quote I'd heard attributed to him insinuating that using charcoal was lazy. "I might have said that," he answered with a smile. Scott makes his own coals in giant barrels behind his store. He shovels the coals into his smoke pits and spends who-knows-how-many-hours tending to and turning whole hogs. He does things the hard way and you can taste every ounce of effort and sweat he puts into his craft. He is living proof that if you do things the right way, work hard and are great at what you do, the world will find you, even on a rural patch of road in the South Carolina lowcountry. He thanked me, then headed back to his smoke pits to make more culinary magic happen. There was more magic to come on our second visit. We pulled up to Scott’s barbecue around 1 p.m. on a Saturday afternoon. It was a typical lowcountry South Carolina summer day, which is to say hot, with air roughly the consistency and humidity level of a bowl of beef stew. There were mosquitos and flies buzzing around that I feared might carry me away, sort of like the flying monkeys in the Wizard of Oz. All that would be worth it, though, to get inside of Scott’s. From the outside, the place looked mostly like it did prior to the fire that burned it down a few years back. There were still people sitting on benches adjacent the front door and there was still a buggy full of the biggest, most amazing-looking watermelons I’ve probably ever seen. I considered myself lucky when I opened the door that the only line at the counter was a family of four. As I patiently stood behind them, I looked around and did notice some differences from the original Scott’s. It is still sort of a general/variety store, but there are way fewer non-barbecue offerings present. Really, I only saw a couple of stand-up display racks of chips, honey buns and normal general store trappings. A lot of the celebrity signed headshots that used to adorn a wall near the register were also gone, probably victims of the flames. On one hand, I hate that because those are fairly cherished mementos, they’re a reminder of who has walked through the doors and for some folks, a signed picture of a Food Network personality is sort of a seal of approval. However, if you’ve ever had Scott’s barbecue, you already know that what you’re getting is good and real. There did remain a sign warning visitors against the evil of “drop down pants.” Once I got to the order window, I told the lady what my wife and mother-in-law wanted (which was a barbecue sandwich and a side of some type). I like tater salad macaroni and such as much as anybody, but if I’m at a world-class barbecue joint that is three-plus hours from my home (meaning I rarely get to eat there) I’m just eating meat. So I ordered a large barbecue sandwich, but also ordered (or thought I ordered) a chicken sandwich. I’d never had any of Scott’s chicken, so I decided to give it a try. I must have just beat the peak lunch rush, because by the time I was done ordering, at least a dozen other folks had come in and gotten in line behind me. One pleasant change at Scott’s is they do have a little bar on the side where a lady sells tea and lemonade. So I ordered us drinks while I waited. When I finally got my order, I took it out to the car, almost giddy and the delights I knew awaited me. I opened the sandwich and inspected it before I shoved it in my face hole. The whole hog approach at Scott’s shows. You aren’t looking at finely chopped meat and it doesn’t resemble traditional pulled pork either. You can see textural differences. I believe there was a succulent belly strand laid right at the top of my sandwich, next to what I’m sure was some ham meat. It had the light red hue of Scott’s barbecue sauce. As Scott makes coals and meticulously tends to his whole hogs, he mops them with a spicy vinegar concoction. And for those unfamiliar, when you cook whole hogs, you don’t use little culinary brushes because it would take forever. You take an actually, full-sized mop, dunk it a big barrel of your sauce, and slather it on the pigs. “This is good, but it’s kind of spicy,” Ashley said. To her, “spicy” is almost a pejorative. It isn’t to me, though. The vinegar tang and red pepper heat cut through the richness of the meat a bit. That sandwich was perfect. You tasted pork, the heat and bite of the sauce, smoke and seasoning in that order. I was fairly hungry, so after knocking out my barbecue sandwich, I went for the chicken sandwich, but there wasn’t one. Oh, there was chicken…about half of one, but I apparently had a miscommunication of some kind with the lady taking my order. There was no bread or bun, just chicken. That was fine with me. The chicken at Scott’s tastes a lot like the barbecue, which is to say the meat flavor is up front, his normal sauce is present and it is smoked to perfection. Pulling out of Scott’s took some doing. The small parking lot and very rural locale are not totally equipped to handle the crowds the place draws. Cars were packed in around us so tightly, we couldn’t see in either direction. Helpfully, someone wearing thick gloves and an apron came from around back, walked out in the road, looked in both directions, then gave us the signal that it was safe to pull out. He then waved and strolled on back to the smoke pits as we left. As for our walk in Hemingway, it was brutally hot, so we had to keep it short. It was a nice little downtown with bright red brick sidewalks and a water tower (which just screams “small town” to me, particularly if there are numbers spray-painted on the side denoting when the nearby school won state). The place seemed to have an inordinate number of haircutting places to be so small and there was, I promise, a car lot that featured two whole vehicles for you to choose from. I only encountered one person during the walk, but one lady at a stoplight did wave and smile and Tucker and Gracie. That’s about all I’ve got on Hemingway. That’s not much, is it? Hmm. Maybe Ashley was right after all. Maybe sometimes, it is mostly about the barbecue.
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