The Hickory Hawg

When I went down to JB’s Smokeshack last week I saw where the Hickory Hawg was located. I have been meaning to make a trip there as well, so today I headed there after a 5 hour Stretch of a Nagios install and configuration at the office. I’ll admit it, I’m a snob when it comes to food. I sometimes prejudge things and while I’m usually right occasionally I’m proven wrong. When I saw that the Hawg was in a small strip mall I was a little concerned with the implications of cooking BBQ in these conditions. I have eaten at a few strip mall BBQ joints before and they’ve never really been great. When I got out of the car some of the reservations went away immediately. I could definetly smell the smoke.

I got there around lunch on Saturday and the place was pretty busy. The restaurant is decorated with the cheesy things one finds at strip mall BBQ places; neatly hung cast iron pans on the wall, a replica banjo, some country home pig decorations and such. Of course there was the obligatory picture of a politician (our “illustrious” governor Mark Sanford) visiting the restaurant. Missing were the old pictures of pitmasters past standing infront of the smoking carcases of 20 hogs or the reviews of the restaurant framed on the wall (as far as I saw). There is no buffet and the Ice Tea was in a couple big Lipton branded dispensers. My snobbery was showing, so I tried to buck up and not be such an ass.

They serve pulled pork, chicken, ribs, hash, cheeseburgers, dogs. The sides consist of your regular BBQ faire; slaw (both BBQ and Cole), fries, hush puppies, baked beans, collards etc… I scanned the menu and a nice girl, who didn’t seem to be older than 15, took my order for a “Big Hawg platter”. The Big Hawg platter is a nice sized sandwich, fries and a drink. I also orded a side of cole slaw and hush puppies. On the ride home the slaw leaked all over my cell phone which has destroyed it as far as I can tell, but I won’t hold that against them.

I had a few hush puppies on the way home and I can tell you they are very good. Nice and crunchy with a distinct onion flavor and sweet. Very good. The BBQ is pulled and not as chooped as over at JB’s. It’s also not as dry as JB’s, but I’m pretty sure most of that is attributed the fact that the Hawg sauces their meat before serving. They did not over sauce which is a good sign. It had just enough to add some flavor to the meat. The meat had a distict hickory flavor (I mean, it should shouldn’t it?) but the smoke was not as pronounced as JB’s. It was perfectly cooked and is a testament to the all wood cooking they do out back. Very good The sauce was sweet with a little vinegar flavor. Tasty but not in your face. Not my favorite but I did like it, a lot. On their website they compare their sauce to a Lexington, NC style, but this sauce had more tomato and less vinegar than a real Lex style in my opinion, but as I said still good. It’s good to see a BBQ restaurant in the Charleston area that doesn’t feature the mustard base sauce. The cole slaw was good but not out of this world. I think next visit I’ll try some ribs and the bbq slaw.

Besides the ruined phone and my snobbery aside, it was an all around good trip to another BBQ stop that I’ll be hitting again.