Smokehouse Restaurant
Address: 2436 Main Street, Elgin, SC 29045-8999
Phone: 803) 438-3249
Web site: http://www.smokehouserestaurant.org/
Cards: yes
Hours of operation: Friday-Saturday, 11-9; Sunday 11-2:30, Thursday is Seafood Night, 11-9:00pm
In Elgin, SC, in Kershaw County just over the Richland County line, there used to be a barbeque house named Hammy’s. It had a large and loyal following. They served up a great buffet and they had the best banana pudding, bar none, in the whole state. But, after years of dishing it out, the owner retired.
Now that same restaurant is under new ownership and it is called Smokehouse Restaurant.
The name Smokehouse is similar to a good many other barbeque restaurants, but don’t be lulled into complacency by the name. Smokehouse is a star in our barbeque firmament. It is one of the only two barbeque houses in the whole state (the other being Shuler’s in Latta, SC) that I’ve said I wish were in my home town.
I had to drive slightly over 50 miles to get to Smokehouse (51.4 to be exact) and, in truth, it isn’t true 100 mile barbeque, but it certainly is 50 mile barbeque and the whole restaurant experience is worth driving even farther than that.
First of all, as we entered I saw a man with a mike in his hand and some loud speakers on stands. Since there was no band there I assumed that he was a DJ. Once we helped ourselves at the buffet and sat down the music cranked up. We were behind a wall and I had my back towards where the music was coming from so I couldn’t see him. After about four songs I assumed the DJ was playing from an album since the voice was the same on each song. It was only a bit later that I realized he was doing the singing himself, karaoke style! Listening to it I thought it was some big-time country music star that was being played. What a great voice, and I generally don’t like to have music playing when I’m having supper, but he was an unexpected treat.
But, if the music was the “first thing” I noticed the food was the encore.
Smokehouse has a few extra touches that others don’t have and they are so good I wish all of them followed their example.
For instance, they have fried cornbread. That takes time and talent and I’ve never seen it anywhere else. My wife, who loves fried cornbread, commented that it was almost as good as mine, which is actually a fine compliment.
And while they have a dessert bar (I was way too full to try it) I saw peach cobbler on it that appeared to be made in the restaurant. But the biggest surprise in the dessert arena was the waitress who brought around a tray of hot doughnuts fried up fresh from the kitchen and dished out all we wanted. Now I consider myself something of a doughnut aficionado and I’m telling you, those were as good as I’ve ever put in my mouth and I’ve had some of the fanciest doughnuts in some of the fanciest places you can imagine.
As I say, at Smokehouse you find things that you don’t see in other places.
But what about the barbeque, you might ask? Well, it was fine, better than average but the real treat was the two shoulders they put out, without any sauce, just as they come from the pit, and you get to pick the meat yourself. My advice is to forget the standard barbeque on the buffet line and go for the picking. It was very, very good.
They had ribs on the buffet and while they were pretty good they were the soaked-in-sauce type one too often finds on buffets, as was the barbeques chicken. Good but not great.
They had fried chicken and they even had catfish stew (shades of the Pee Dee) which I sniffed but didn’t try. I was too busy going back to pick more of that shoulder meat.
They even had a baked potato bar with all the fixings there for you to make up your potato just the way you like it, but, again, I was too full of barbeque, rice and hash, and assorted other vegetables to attempt that.
Speaking of vegetables, the butterbeans were very good and cooked without sugar. The collards had only a touch of sugar, but not enough to interfere with their taste. There were mashed potatoes, chicken gravy, fried okra, corn on the cob and more. But it was the barbeque straight from the pit, the fried cornbread and the doughnuts that stole the show.
They have three kinds of sauce; there is vinegar and pepper that is pretty good, a sweetish mustard that is actually better than I expected, and a thick red sauce that tasted like an institutional sauce improved a bit. The only one that didn’t detract from the barbeque was the mustard sauce. But forget the sauces. Go for the picked shoulder, have some hash and rice, a couple of fried cornbreads, a few doughnuts and you will see what truly “fine dining” is.
As we headed for the door the singer (Julian Brown who has some CDs available) was singing “How Great Thou Art,” which was actually the first hymn he had mixed in with his soft country selections. I put a nice tip in his tip jar and gave him thumbs up. Yes, how great it was.