BBQ in Beaufort, SC: The Definitive Guide

Beaufort’s barbecue list is short, but the places that stand out give you two very different choices. If you’re after pork, ribs, hash, mustard sauce, and familiar Southern sides, you’ll want to head in one direction. If brisket, post-oak smoke, and a little Texas-Mexican influence sound better, go the other way.

There isn’t much point ranking those two meals against each other. What matters more is which one sounds good to you.

The main list stays in Beaufort proper. Port Royal is close enough for an easy side trip. Bluffton is farther away, and only one place there is strong enough to justify the drive.

Beaufort BBQ Quick Picks

Not sure where to start? Pick the experience that sounds most like what you’re looking for.

The Best BBQ in Beaufort, SC

Mother Smokin’ Good BBQ

You’ll want to visit Mother Smokin’ Good! because the Greens serve South Carolina barbecue with deep family roots in the Beaufort area.

Pitmaster Marquith “Roscoe” Green grew up in Brooklyn, but he spent summers and holidays on his mother’s family farm in Lobeco, north of Beaufort. That’s where relatives taught him to cook barbecue low and slow over an open pit. Roscoe and his wife, Danielle, later spent years cooking at festivals, catering events, and serving barbecue from their mobile operation before opening their little shop near Beaufort’s Waterfront Park.

Pulled pork and ribs come with hash and rice, collards, black-eyed peas, yams, and a mustard-based gold sauce. You’ll also find brisket, chicken, turkey legs, and some of the big festival dishes the Greens were serving long before they had a permanent restaurant. The Scott Street storefront is new, but Mother Smokin’ Good! isn’t a new barbecue business.

However, you might not choose Mother Smokin’ Good! if brisket is what brought you out for barbecue. If that’s what you’re after, Bordertown is the better place to start.

Read More

Bordertown BBQ

You’ll want to visit Bordertown BBQ because it serves serious Central Texas-style barbecue, including brisket and beef ribs cooked over post oak on a 1,000-gallon stick burner.

Kochan and Kristen Miklinevich opened Bordertown in 2026 after years in the restaurant business, but his interest in Texas barbecue goes back much farther. He spent years working on the cooking methods and making trips to Texas before bringing the idea to Beaufort.

Briskets cook for around twelve hours, which can mean tending a fire in the middle of the night to get ready for the next day. Pork ribs, beef ribs, and other smoked meats round out the barbecue side of the menu.

But Bordertown isn’t trying to recreate a Central Texas meat market plate for plate. The Mexican side of Texas shows up too, with tacos, carnitas-style pork, nachos, tallow fries, and other dishes built around the smoked meats. They cook for the day rather than planning on carrying barbecue into tomorrow, so getting there late can mean finding that something has sold out.

However, you might not choose Bordertown if you came to the Lowcountry wanting hash, mustard sauce, and traditional South Carolina pork barbecue. Mother Smokin’ Good! is the better fit for that meal.

Read More

Looking for more options? Browse our complete directory of barbecue restaurants in and around Beaufort.

Worth the Drive from Beaufort

The Smokehouse at Paris Avenue — Port Royal

Port Royal is only a few minutes from downtown Beaufort, and The Smokehouse at Paris Avenue is where I’d go first for another good plate of barbecue nearby.

The menu covers brisket, pulled pork, ribs, smoked chicken, and sausage, along with shrimp, oysters, and other Lowcountry favorites. Don’t overlook the sides. Collards, red rice, cabbage, mac and cheese, baked beans, and fried okra make it easy to build the kind of plate you want at a small Southern barbecue place.

It’s a small, casual spot, and Port Royal is close enough that going over for lunch hardly feels like leaving Beaufort.

Roadhouse Ribs — Port Royal

Roadhouse Ribs makes the most sense when you want barbecue but the rest of the table may have other plans.

Brisket, ribs, pulled pork, chicken, and sausage come out of a custom smoker fired with oak and pecan, but barbecue is only part of the menu. Roadhouse also serves steaks, prime rib, seafood, and plenty of other dinner options, with table service and a full bar.

I wouldn’t make Roadhouse my first stop if brisket is your only priority. But when you want a sit-down dinner a few minutes from Beaufort, especially with a group that doesn’t all want barbecue, it makes a lot of sense.

Bluffton Barbeque — Bluffton

Bluffton Barbeque is worth the longer trip if you don’t mind driving about forty minutes from Beaufort for lunch.

Ted and Donna Huffman have been cooking barbecue in Bluffton for years, and Ted’s path into the business reaches back to an earlier local operation connected with the late Oscar Frazier. Huffman built his barbecue around a custom cooker made from a large propane tank. Earlier profiles of the restaurant document oak, hickory, and pecan in his fires.

Pulled pork is the star, with ribs and chicken rounding things out. Add greens, Brunswick stew, mac and cheese, or the sweet potato casserole. Bluffton has other barbecue restaurants, but this is the one I’d leave Beaufort specifically to visit.

Beaufort Barbecue and the Sea Islands

Barbecue turns up surprisingly early in Beaufort’s written history. By the late 1700s, the Beaufort Hunting Club had its own barbecue house outside town, a place where local men gathered to eat, drink, and socialize. A hurricane destroyed it in 1804, prompting a poem that remembered the feasting, including meats described as barbecued and seasonings such as cayenne and mustard. It wasn’t a restaurant, and that mustard shouldn’t be confused with the mustard barbecue sauce South Carolina became known for much later. Still, a building devoted to these gatherings tells us that barbecue already had a place in Beaufort life more than two centuries ago.

A very different and far more consequential gathering took place near Beaufort on January 1, 1863. Thousands of people came to Camp Saxton on Port Royal Island for a public celebration of the Emancipation Proclamation. Black Union soldiers, formerly enslaved people, families, and visitors from Beaufort and the surrounding Sea Islands gathered beneath the live oaks as the proclamation was read. Whole cattle were cooked over pits for the crowd. Susie King Taylor, who had been born enslaved and served with the 1st South Carolina Volunteers, later remembered the barbecue as part of that remarkable day. The significance of Camp Saxton goes far beyond what people ate, of course. But barbecue was there as families and soldiers celebrated freedom together.

On nearby St. Helena Island, whole-hog barbecue also belonged to family and community life. Older accounts describe hog killing and barbecue during the cooler months, when families raised much of their own food and one freshly cooked hog produced far more meat than a household could easily keep. So people shared it. A family might cook a hog and feed relatives and neighbors, then another household would do the same later. The pits could be simple, and the cooking didn’t depend on written recipes or carefully measured ingredients. People cooked the way they had been taught and seasoned the food until it tasted right.

That pattern—learning barbecue from family and cooking it for a crowd—hasn’t disappeared. Roscoe Green learned to cook from relatives around their place in Lobeco and spent years feeding people at festivals, parties, and catered events before Mother Smokin’ Good! opened downtown. That doesn’t make his barbecue a direct continuation of nineteenth-century St. Helena cooking. What feels familiar is the way the knowledge is passed along and the way barbecue keeps showing up when people gather. Around Beaufort and the Sea Islands, that has been happening for a very long time.