Barbecue's "Golden Secret"

Melvin's  barbecue sandwich topped with the "golden secret" sauce. (Photo by Denny Culbert/ The Barbecue Bus) 

Bessinger, certainly the most famous surname in South Carolina barbecue. Mustard sauce, Piggy Park. Icons of South Carolina history and culture and Bessinger family inventions.

One of fourteen children born to Mack Bessinger, restaurant patriarch Joseph Jacob, was known as ‘Big Joe.’ He moved from the family farm near Orangeburg to open the Holly Hill Café in 1939. There, together with the Sweatman family, he concocted a mustard-based barbecue sauce, owning to their shared German roots. That “Golden Secret,” as the Bessingers call it, became the state’s signature sauce.

Melvin Bessinger, like most of his ten siblings, followed his father into the barbecue business. In 1961, with another brother, Melvin opened his first barbecue restaurant in west Charleston. Three decades later, Melvin split off to found his own barbecue joint. Today, third-generation barbecue entrepreneur, David Bessinger, maintains the Bessinger family tradition.

— Rien Fertel/ The Barbecue Bus

Melvin’s Legendary Bar-B-Q
538 Folly Road
Charleston, SC 29412
(843) 762-0511

Thanksgiving Every Day of the Week

A sampling of the fare from the Brown's Bar-B-Q buffet in Kingstree, South Carolina. (photo by Denny Culbert/ The Barbecue Bus)

Thomas M. Brown, Jr. is a farmer. He plants soy, wheat, hay, and oats to sell on the market. Additionally, he grows corn, squash, zucchini, and broccoli, okra, butter beans, collards, and cabbage for his restaurant’s massive buffet line. At Brown’s Bar-B-Q, these fresh vegetables are served in season alongside pilau rice and white rice, macaroni, yams, barbecue chicken and fried chicken, barbecue turkey and baked turkey, barbecue ribs, smoked ham, potato salad, coleslaw, and, yes, chopped barbecue.   

A motorcycle accident left a teenage Thomas Brown with a broken leg. Confined to bed and with a hot plate set up within reach, he learned to cook for himself. In 1981, he started serving takeout plates—rice and gravy, yams, barbecue—from a window on the family farm. A decade later, he built the dining room, as large as the buffet table is long.

At Brown’s Bar-B-Q, dinner, or lunch, is like Thanksgiving eating enjoyed every day of the week. The fresh vegetables, the variety of meats; all the desserts that can’t fit on one plate. It’s hard to keep track of all the gravies.

— Rien Fertel/ The Barbecue Bus

Brown’s Bar-B-Q

809 Williamsburg County Highway  

Kingstree, SC 29556

(843) 382-2753

Rust Gravy in Orangeburg

Barbecue pork covered with Dukes' rust-colored sauce with slaw, crisp skin, and rust colored hash over rice. (Photo by Denny Culbert/ The Barbecue Bus)

At least a dozen barbecue establishments, covering nearly two-thirds of the State’s geography, operate under the Dukes name. Most South Carolinians across the Midlands and Lowlands claim a favorite. So, ask a local for directions to Dukes Bar-B-Que and you’re hazarding a geographic mixup.  

Earl Duke founded the original Dukes Bar-B-Que along Whitman Street in downtown Orangeburg. From their the dukedom spread, with family members and others opening locations. The first Dukes eventually passed to Harold Kittrell, formerly a carpenter, and then onto his son, Tony, the present manager/co-owner.

Dukes Bar-B-Que (note, never spelled Duke’s) still stocks a loaded buffet line with sides—green beans, baked beans, macaroni and cheese, slaw, potato salad, pickles, and bread—and the heavy hitters: rice, hash, barbecue chicken, fried chicken, and, of course, chopped shoulder and ham barbecue pork. The standout remains Earl Dukes’ sauce recipe: sweet, ketchup-based, thicker then most, and orange-yellow tinged, giving it a color and viscosity Tony Kittrell deems “rust gravy.”

— Rien Fertel/ The Barbecue Bus

Dukes Bar-B-Que

1298 Whitman Street Southeast

Orangeburg, SC 29115

(803) 534-2916

Learning from Mom: Levern Darby

Levern Darby at Cooper's Country Store, Salters, South Carolina. (photo by Denny Culbert/ The Barbecue Bus)

Women remain a rarity in professional barbecuedom, especially in the realm of whole-hog cookery. But Levern Darby learned from his mother, Naomi, who slaughtered hogs and sold the oak-smoked barbecue from the trunk of her car, outside of what would later be named Cooper's Country Store in Salters, SC. Darby has now worked at the Store going on 36 years. There he watches that the hogs are cooked right, the way Mom taught him.

Audio and Text by Rien Fertel
Click the play button below to listen to Levern. 

Levern Darby works in the kitchen at Cooper's Country Store, Salters, South Carolina. (photo by Denny Culbert/ The Barbecue Bus)

Barbecue cooked by Levern Darby at Cooper's Country Store, Salters, South Carolina. (photo by Denny Culbert/ The Barbecue Bus)

The Cracklin' Sound: 'Little Joe' Brunson

Little Joe Brunson removes a piece of crispy pork skin from the pit at Sweatman's Bar-B-Que. (photo by Denny Culbert/ The Barbecue Bus)

Little Joe Brunson at Sweatman's Bar-B-Que. (photo by Denny Culbert/ The Barbecue Bus)

After taking the whole hogs off the pits at Sweatman's Bar-B-Que in Holly Hill, South Carolina, Jonathan 'Little Joe' Brunson smokes the remaining pork skins over oak and hickory coals to make what may be the South's most perfect cracklin'. Working at this barbecue institution for over thirty years, Little Joe can determine when the cracklins are done just by their sizzle.

Click the SoundCloud box below to hear Little Joe.

Audio editing and text by Rien Fertel/ The Barbecue Bus
 

Little Joe Brunson gathers a shovelful of wood coals for the pit. (photo by Denny Culbert/ The Barbecue Bus)

Daily Specials as Community Service

Jay Allen on the phone with radio personality Mike Stevens, Tuesday at Midway BBQ. Photo by Denny Culbert

Each morning at 11:05, "Barbecue Science Engineer" Jay Allen of Midway BBQ in Buffalo, SC reads the daily specials to radio personality Mike Stevens of WBCU 1460 AM and 103.5 FM. Union County citizens tune in to hear about the restaurant meets butcher's meat-and-three and cuts of the day. Listen to a warmup clip from June 12, 2002.

Click the Broadcastr link below to listen to the daily specials.
Audio recording and editing by Rien Fertel