A new-ish spot in Florence, here’s what you get when a twice james beard nominated chef opens a bbq restaurant dedicated to cooking whole hog over pecan wood.
Bbq (pulled pork) - served with pee Dee style sauce, light taste of smoke, crazy good as is the bottle of pee dee sauce on the table.
Sausage - visible pieces of cheese, I’d stop here just for one of these links.
Ribs - tender, delicious, fat fully rendered, lightly spiced, I’d call these well prepared but not to my taste.
Chicken - my wife ordered this, I typically don’t love smoked chicken, they managed to avoid rubbery skin, meat was tender, couldn’t stop eating this.
Hash - here’s where you start to get a sense that there’s a chef in the kitchen, mustard forward, smooth, just incredible. @johntannerbbq not sure if you’re still on a hash journey, add this to your list. Also, not far from i95
The rest of the sides were wonderful, collard greens were a standout.
They share a space with a brewery, which adds to the fun! @FlemSnopes if you haven’t done so, might want to add this to your database.
vinous pleasure, As it happens I’ll be going back soon, to try the hash, of course, and re-check the pork. A rib would not be amiss. this will be another trip to finalize some “best” lists for 2026.
IF you’re still driving south, check out my “Georgia tour” posts. There are superb spots around Brunswick, not least the incredible. fried shrimp at J&R in Darien.
Toni and I were in Florence in early October and had every intention of eating at Elliott’s. But we’d had barbecue from Prime Barbecue in Knightdale NC (near Raleigh) for lunch and it was so good that we couldn’t stop eating it. So we just didn’t have the stomach capacity for Elliott’s. We’re getting old, obviously. In my prime I could happily eat at 3 barbecue places in a single day.
Elliot’s is right at the top of my barbecue bucket list, at least in part because I think the idea of combining a wall of pinball machines with barbecue sounds like genius. And whole hog is hard to find.
You’re well ahead of the wave on this one. I think that even John Tanner hasn’t eaten at Elliott’s yet. There was a lot of anticipation about it when it opened, since the pitmaster used to run Buxton Hall in Asheville, which everyone raved about.
Our barbecue trip where we skipped Elliott’s was still highly successful. The trip was 7 days in NC and SC and we had barbecue 8 times.
My list of my favorite barbecue places in the country had 15 places on it before the trip and I added 3 places to it from just that one trip – City Limits in West Columbia SC, Prime in Knightdale NC, and Stamey’s in Greensboro NC. It sounds like if we’d had bigger stomachs, Elliott’s might have been added to that list.
Elliott’s is in my spreadsheet already. Southern Living’s latest best-of list has Elliott’s ranked #36 in the South and I added all 50 of the places on that list to my spreadsheet the day it came out.
I was very happy that BigRoads.com, the road trip planning site, just added a link to my barbecue spreadsheet on its page of the best barbecue places in each state (it’s all the way at the bottom of the page):
I’ve been to Stameys a bunch of times, my last visit wasn’t great so it’s been in the penalty box for a few years, will definitely give it another try! Our navigator took us right by city limits(!) but we had a late start out of ny and decided not to stop.
As for eating bbq, long gone are my days of traveling to the research triangle for work, eating at Allen and sons for lunch every day and trying different bbq joints at night. I really can’t eat bbq more than once or twice a week, though I still enjoy crawl style grazing where my brothers and I try 3-4 places per day. And then theres the marital coin involved in a bbq stop
I consulted your spreadsheet during our visit to kc, it is an impressive achievement, happy to hear you’re receiving some well-deserved recognition for it!
I did a post on it at the beginning of my Georgia tour posts. Very good pork. I was there shortly after they opened, and I’m eager to try the hash, etc. Other Florence places do liver hash, which is a bit strong for me.
I just posted another review of Elliot’s, where I ate on a recent tour to pin down the best places in the Carolina’s and VA. The pork is excellent. The hash and rice was good. An unusually stingy portion.
I also did an update in Redwood Smoke Shack in Suffolk, SW of Norfolk and east of Smithfield where I have a very nice country ham biscuit. Redwood offers very good brisket and outstanding wings. Nice sausage. And that have invented bananamissou. I also posted on Grady's, which is holding up.
upcoming posts will include Rodney Scott’s (again), King BBQ, the Duke’s in Orangeburg, City Limits (Robert Moss’ #1, Whispering Pines (again) and Mama Jean’s in Roanoke. My efforts to post my Georgia Tour and Bordeaux trip collections soured me on trip posts with photos.
I also did a Western NC Tour earlier and found a new place, JD’s in the town of Rutherford College and a wonderful meal at Jimmy’s in Welcome, north of and adjacent to Lexington. It’s just a shallow step below Red Bridges and Lexington. At the ned of that Tour we all spent a week in Blowing Rock, a beautiful mountain town with lots of good places to eat.
My oldest child is a senior at University of South Carolina Honors College and one of his classes this coming semester is The History and Culture of BBQ & Beer in the Carolinas :they get to travel all over the state.
I did an independent study on the latter, but I was in Ohio so not much opportunity for barbecue. He should bet ready for the course by reviewing my blog, of course, (search South Carolina) and James Rosser’s Going Shoe hog. If y’all aren’t from SC, he’ll want to know all about hash and rice (just hash in the upland), chicken mull, chicken biog, and perleau.
I’ll tutor for food.
There’s a graduate level course in barbecue right there in Columbia. City Limits is as good as I’ve ever had, and Maurice’s Piggy Park isn’t far behind. City Limits is Texas-style, mostly, but the old geographic divisions are rapidly collapsing around the country.
Do you still have BBQ contests in South Carolina? I’ve judged over 30 in the Northeast and had hoped to get to 50, but opportunities have been pretty limited since the pandemic.
I’ve always wondered, do people turn in BBQ with mustard sauce at your contests? I love it, but it’s unheard of here in New York. I once thought about trying it myself, but someone turned in what I thought was a great white-sauce chicken entry and the folks at my table were basically, “What is this?”
