BBQ in Rock Hill, SC: The Definitive Guide

Around Rock Hill and across York County, barbecue has long been tied to gatherings.

Old newspaper accounts put it at farmers’ events, mill outings, church gatherings, and public celebrations. Later generations cooked it for volunteer fire departments, benefit dinners, and holiday weekends.

That older way of doing things hasn’t disappeared, but Rock Hill barbecue has grown well beyond it. Today you can pick up beef hash from a family smokehouse, sit down to pork and ribs at a neighborhood joint, or head downtown for Texas-style brisket and oysters.

So if you’re looking for the “best” barbecue in Rock Hill, start with what kind of stop you want.

For our purposes, Rock Hill includes the city and nearby Bethesda. Clover and Chester are far enough out that we treat those stops as Worth the Drive.

Rock Hill BBQ Quick Picks

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

The Best BBQ in Rock Hill, SC

BearWalrus in Rock Hill

You’ll want to visit BearWalrus because it pairs Texas-style brisket smoked over South Carolina white oak with oysters and a downtown restaurant that works as well for dinner as it does for barbecue.

Chef-owner Phil Spencer grew up in Smyrna and spent years working in restaurant kitchens before returning to York County. BearWalrus brings together two foods he especially loves: barbecue and oysters.

Brisket and wings go onto a Texas-built smoker, while another wood fire handles food elsewhere in the kitchen. Brisket is the obvious place to start, but the menu can also include turkey, pork, ribs, beef cheek, sausage, and other smoked meats. Then there are the oysters, served raw or chargrilled.

BearWalrus sits in an old White Street building near the former Rock Hill Printing and Finishing Company — the Bleachery — where Spencer’s grandparents once worked. Original brick, reclaimed wood, and family touches keep the place tied to home even when the cooking looks toward Texas.

However, you might not choose BearWalrus if you’re craving a simple Carolina plate of pork and hash. Come here for brisket, oysters, wood smoke, and a restaurant doing something Rock Hill didn’t have before.

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The Dixie Pig in Rock Hill

You’ll want to visit The Dixie Pig because it’s the kind of barbecue joint you can walk into almost any day and find something for everybody at the table.

The Dixie Pig has been serving Rock Hill since 2015. It’s casual, a little funky, and built around familiar pleasures: blues playing, sauces on the table, pulled pork, ribs, smoked chicken, brisket, hash, and a long list of sides.

I’d start with the pork or St. Louis ribs. The hash is worth adding, too. Dixie Pig makes theirs with pulled pork and smoked chicken, along with potatoes, corn, and seasoning, then serves it over rice. With pork and chicken left in the mix, it’s a meatier, chunkier take than some of the smoother hashes you’ll find elsewhere in South Carolina.

The sauce lineup wanders all over the map in a good way. You can go vinegar, mustard, tomato, bourbon, or Alabama white. This isn’t a restaurant trying to prove there is only one correct way to eat barbecue.

However, you might not choose The Dixie Pig if you’re after a more traditional, old-school barbecue stop. Come here when you want pork, ribs, hash, sides, and enough variety to keep everybody happy.

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Gardner's BBQ

You’ll want to visit Gardner’s BBQ & Hash because it still operates more like an old-fashioned local smokehouse than a conventional restaurant.

The story goes back to Jerry Gardner, who spent years with the Rock Hill Fire Department and helped establish the Bethesda Volunteer Fire Department. Jerry and other volunteers cooked barbecue to raise money for trucks and equipment and to help people in the community. He had learned barbecue and hash from Billy Horne of Sharon, farther west in York County. His son Steve eventually carried that cooking into the family business.

Gardner’s is takeout only, the schedule is limited, and the menu stays short: barbecue, beef hash, Brunswick stew, fresh country sausage, and a few sides. Some of the old iron pots used for hash and stew have been part of Bethesda cooking for decades.

Get the barbecue and beef hash together. The hash is especially worth trying if you’ve never had the beef-heavy style found in parts of the Upstate.

However, you might not choose Gardner’s if you need table service or flexible hours. Check the current calendar before you leave home. This is a place to plan around, not one to assume will be open.

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Looking for more options? Browse all Rock Hill-area barbecue restaurants in our complete directory.

Worth the Drive from Rock Hill

Buttermilk’s Barbecue and Catering — Chester

If you’re willing to head south for barbecue, Buttermilk’s is the first place I’d send you.

Rob and Jane Brown have built the Chester restaurant around a good pairing: Rob’s smoked meats and Jane’s Southern cooking. Rob has been cooking ribs and barbecue for more than 20 years, and the menu gives you plenty to choose from beyond pulled pork.

Start with the brisket or ribs, but save room for the sides. Fried okra, mac and cheese, bacon-fried cabbage, potato casserole, and Buttermilk pie make this feel as much like country cooking as a barbecue stop.

Buttermilk’s keeps a Thursday-through-Sunday schedule, and popular meats can sell out. If you’re making the drive, earlier is safer.

Courtney’s BBQ — Clover

Courtney’s is worth the drive to Clover for ribs, a longtime family operation, and an old country-store setting.

Gene Courtney began smoking meat for church gatherings and parties in 1989. Ten years later, he and his wife Janice opened Courtney’s in the old Pine Bark Grocery Store, a country-store building dating to the 1940s.

Ribs are where I’d start. Pork and chicken round out the hickory-smoked side of the menu, and the place has had plenty of time to build a following around that barbecue.

The Courtney family has also raised hogs in Clover for decades and sells pasture-raised pork through the business. More recently, they added a brewery, so these days you can eat ribs in the old country-store setting with a house beer and, depending on the day, live music nearby.

Courtney’s has changed plenty since those early church cooks, but it still feels like a family place that grew up with the community around it.

Barbecue Was Here Before the Restaurants

Rock Hill’s barbecue history doesn’t lead back to one famous restaurant family or one celebrated style. What keeps showing up instead is barbecue whenever people had a reason to gather.

Old York County newspapers put barbecue at farmers’ gatherings, public celebrations, mill events, and church outings. One name that stands out is B. W. Creed of Rock Hill, who cooked beef and mutton with Brunswick stew for a cotton-mill barbecue in 1919 and was described at the time as a well-known barbecue cook across the Upcountry. His menu is a good reminder that barbecue here wasn’t always the pulled-pork plate we tend to picture today.

Pete’s BBQ kept another version of that cook-for-an-occasion tradition alive for more than half a century. Pete Wheeles began cooking on India Hook Road in 1963, opening around selected holidays while families stood in line and carried home pounds of barbecue for the weekend. When Pete’s closed, members of the old crew eventually brought the tradition back as Secondhand Smoke at the same location. It still operates only around a handful of holidays, which makes it too limited for our regular recommendations but very much part of the Rock Hill story.

Gardner’s came from a similar world of volunteer-fire-department cooks and community benefits. Courtney’s started with Gene Courtney smoking meat for church gatherings before there was ever a restaurant. They weren’t all part of one family or one documented cooking lineage. What they shared was the occasion: around York County, barbecue was often what you cooked when a lot of people needed feeding.

The rest of the Upstate adds some context. Light tomato sauce has historically been associated with upper South Carolina, while beef-heavy hash has long been found in parts of the region. Gardner’s beef hash makes sense in that company, but there isn’t enough evidence to call York County itself an old hash center.

Today, those old geographic boundaries tell only part of the story. You can still find pork, beef hash, and the kinds of foods that have been around here for generations. But you can just as easily wind up eating brisket, oysters, Alabama white sauce, or something nobody around Rock Hill would have expected on a barbecue menu fifty years ago.

The old ways are still here. They’ve just got more company now.