I missed the first planned stop of the day, Bked Donuts. On the way in I noticed a Vicious Biscuit in the same development, and I’ll take a biscuit sandwich over a pastry any day of the week. I did a little quick iPhone research, however, and found that they use city ham and charge $9 for a simple biscuit sandwich in a part of the country where you can get a good one for $3.Vicious indeed! So I was late getting to Bked, and the service there was slow, so I settled for a coffee for the road. I was eager to get to our first planned stop of the day, McCabe’s in Manning, my favorite barbecue place in South Carolina. I pulled in and saw a handful of RoadFood Crawlers standing around, looking forelorn. It seems that the McCabe clan was away at a family wedding. David Sanders and I canoodled and remembered that D&H Bar B Q was another Manning barbecue place that many folks dearly love. We all repaired to D&H. Good call.
D&H, like so many South Carolina barbecue places, offers a buffet.
You can buy items solo or a meat and three or get all you can eat if you’re wiling to spend $10.90, including tax. Being a high roller, I went all in. Here’s my plate.
In the upper right is hash and rice, then green beans, then a chicken thigh on top of some barbecue, then chicken bog, and a couple of hushpuppies.
Perhaps I should do some translating. The hash on top of the rice is a South Carolina original. It’s been called “liquid sausage,” which begins to give a sense of the dish. Hash began, bacon in the day, as a mixture of the less desirable parts of the pig, the head, the liver, and the lights — poor folks food. It has changed over the years with the general increase in prosperity so that now it’s mostly meat, or even beef, with little or no offal. Or a lot. The recipes range all over the map, or pig. This particular hash had the sort of liver you find in a fine country pâté — rich folks’ food. It created a thin ribbon of flavor but a major boost of richness. It was absolutely delicious, one of the best I’ve ever tasted.
The chicken bog is a relative of chicken pilau, perlo, perleau, or however you care to spell it. It’s a mixture of broth, chicken, sausage, and rice. It’s called chicken bog when it’s wet, thicker than a stew, and perleau when the moisture has been cooked off. I prefer the bog, and I especially enjoyed this version, which had a good measure of sausage. Pork makes everything better.
That was a fine plate of food. And it was a lot of food, a ridiculous amount of food for the price.
The rest needs no introduction. The pork was tasty, especially with the vinegar sauce, but it was’nt cooked exclusively with wood, so it lost a couple of layers of flavor and wasn’t up there with McCabe’s. Just about everyone’s does. The hushpuppies and green beans were spot on. And the chicken thigh was superb. It was succulent and rich with flavor, and had an outstanding skin, just outstanding. This is some of the best fried chicken around.
Wow! I was well fed and certainly not at al hungry. But that hash was calling to me, so I went back for more.
It was so good! As you can see, I got some sweet potato casserole for another vegetable. Well, it’s called a vegetable, but it’s really a dessert. I also got a slice of pecan pie, as I was still relying on my vegetable rationalization for the casserole. Both were delicious, but for a deep, rich, knock-out flavor, I’ll take that hash and rice every time.
This was a fantastic lunch. You really need to go to D&H and try that hash. And the chicken. And, well, use your own judgment.
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