Brown’s Bar-B-Que, Kingstree, South Carolina

Let me say right up front that I didn’t do justice to Brown’s, much as I was looking forward to it after all the great reports I’d seen on I Love SC BBQ, Destination BBQ’s excellent Facebook discussion group. I also note that each of my two earlier lunches involved a lot of food.

Here’s the problem. After a great Lunch #2 at Shuler’s I drove straight over to Brown’s at 809 North Williamsburg County Highway in Kingstree, about an hour away, and saw that welcoming sight.

Then I walked on inside and saw the large dining space and the counter where you order.

The menu is straightforward. The buffet is a flat $14.95, or you can do a meat and three for $9.95 per pound.

Normally, it’s an easy choice. Get the buffet. Then I looked at that long line of delicious food on the buffet, full of all manner of toothsome Southern delicacies. A salad bar and a dessert bar loomed behind me.

And I quailed. I realized that I just didn’t have in me. As Toby Keith said, “I ain’t as good as I once was, but I’m as good once as I ever was.” On that day, I’d been good twice already, and to be honest, and I was done in. I hadn’t been in training for big eating as I should have been. I didn’t have my game face, the right mindset. Sometimes discretion is the better part of valor, and I knew my limitations. After all, I was in South Carolina to focus on barbecue and hash and rice.

I just ordered a simple plate, a meat and three, rather than diving into that Lucullan buffet of multiple meats, vegetables, and a dessert or three. Oh, and salads, too. I like to think of it as a strategic withdrawal, a sort of live to fight another day. I like to think of it as a culinary Dunkirk.

You can see the results. Small helpings of greens, hash and rice, pork, and green beans.

The pork was tender and moist, and it had a wonderful tangy sauce that brought out the slow-cooked pork flavor. That sauce was right up my alley. The only thing missing was smoke. Brown’s barbecue tasted good the way Parker’s or Morris‘s tastes good. What it lacks is that rich smokiness and the extra layer of flavor you get when the pork fat drips down on the low and slow coals and sends up the puffs of pork fat smoke that give an extra layer of flavor that exalts places like Scott’s and McCabe’s, to name two nearby places. The pork was good, no doubt of that, but not top rank.

The vegetables, on the other hand, were top rank. These were good Southern vegetables and that’s high praise indeed. The hash was another liver hash, which meant that I needed to tame the flavor some. I added some salt and pepper, and Texas Pete. I didn’t see any Texas Pete Vinegar Sauce or Brown’s own vinegar-pepper sauce, and the extra container of barbecue sauce was plugged. My additions tamed the liver, but it was hard to gauge the amount of Texas Pete, and it ended up tasting like Texas Pete with a thread of liver. That was fine as far as it went, but I had drowned all the complexity and the nuance of flavors in the hash.

I told you up front that I didn’t do justice to Brown’s. I’ll have to go back when I’m ready to do justice to a buffet, and I don’t hesitate to recommend that you go to Brown’s. Of course even if I start fresh, I’ll never be able to try everything on that buffet. Let me know your favorite items there so I can prepare.

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