Many you are aware of my list of the Best Places to Eat Near I-95 from Washington to Key West. I recently drove down to Savannah to prepare for a barbecue, Brunswick stew, and fried shrimp tour of Georgia. Stay tuned. And I have a complaint about the State of South Carolina. All of the traditional barbecue places — the ones along I-95 — are closed on Monday. They’re also closed on Sunday, Tuesday, and Wednesday, but I was driving down on a Monday. Sure, I could detour to Charleston or Columbia, but I was on deadline and lacked an unlimited budget. The upshot was that I didn’t get any barbecue until I got to Savannah, and even there, Randy’s BBQ, my target dinner, turned out to be closed, too.
But I’m an upbeat guy, and know that when a door closes, a window opens. I’d prefer a door at my advanced age, but I can still manage full length French windows, and my pre-trip research revealed Savannah Smokehouse BBQ and Brew as a local favorite. So after I checked in to the posh Fairfield Inn by the Interstate, I drove downtown to 16 West State Street, figured out how to pay for parking in 11 minutes flat, and ambled on in to Savannah Smokehouse.
It’s a nice place, squeezed into a narrow building with a very appealing local feel.
It’s a far cry from the sybaritic atmosphere of the huge brewery centric places at which food so often is a secondary consideration.
I ordered a pork plate with collards and Brunswick stew, and added a Hoplin IPA, which was just the thing after a long drive. Here’s my food —
I have to say that the pork was just okay. As you can see, it had been chopped very fine, almost minced, and that chop tends to dry quickly. It did have a light smoky favor, but the pork flavor didn’t seem to have developed. I asked and they confirmed my suspicion that the pork been cooked in a Southern Pride. I admit to a strong preference for barbecue cooked with 100% wood. The only place I’ve come across that produces actually great barbecue in a Southern Pride was Off da Bone, where Daniel Spann cut off the gas connection and cooks exclusively with wood. There certainly are places who don’t cook with wood that I really enjoy. A good sauce helps, and I used some of their Tangy Carolina Gold sauce and mixed it with some of their unlabeled hot sauce, which was a lot like Texas Pete. That combination worked really well, and helped draw out the pork flavor. I’m a great believe that if something is not exactly the way you like it, see if you can adjust it. The goal, after all, is to enjoy the food, to be pleased, and I was pleased.
The collards definitely pleased me. They were quite good. There was no visible meat in my serving, but they had more smoke flavor than the pork, a decidedly smoky flavor. And the pot likker was absolutely delicious, and that’s a good dunking the corn bread. I suspect that the flavor comes from the bones of smoked cuts. Wherever it originates, it works!
The Brunswick stew was a lot like the North Carolina variety, with a very good balance of meat and vegetables, but timid in the use of vinegar and pepper — at least to my taste. As I do in North Carolina, I mixed a little with some of their Texas Pete-like hot sauce, and it was just about perfect.
I can see why Savannah Smokehouse is so popular. It’s a charming setting, and they offer a number of sweet barbecue sauces, which are popular among so many. They sells some top notch beer, which is a plus, and I was able to salvage the minor shortcomings by some ingenuity in mixing sauces. I really wish they’d change to all-wood cooking, and perhaps a little rougher chop but I’d be happy to go there again.
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