Eating on the Road in South Carolina

If you follow this blog, you may notice that most weeks I travel to South Carolina for work. I put up the occasional post on my out of town meals, but I try to make EIA a fairly localized blog, so I try to not bore readers with every mundane meal out on the road.

But exploring an unfamiliar locale has its benefits and I was thinking about how I decide where I’m going to eat. I hit up the popular spots that are recommended to me, but in general, I’m way more adventurous than I was a year ago. Searching for the perfect hole in the wall has become sport, where each first step into a dingy, run-down chopped pork BBQ shack in a bad neighborhood becomes an exciting moment that has the potential to be my most satisfying and crave-worthy meal of the week. No PR firm. No marketing gimmicks. No buzz. No pretense.

The best BBQ sandwich you’ve ever had in your life is in the middle of nowhere in South Georgia, but maybe you’ll never know.

Seek these places out. Have some fun with it. See a crumbling building off a country road that says “Fried Chicken”? Hit the brakes.

Currently my favorite practice is to boot up my iPhone, find my location in Google Maps, then search for generic terms like “food”, “chicken”, or “BBQ”. The number of results is often surprising. Below are a few photos of my recent findings.

Menu at a country food shack in Hardeeville, SC (20 miles from Savannah)

Collards, fried chicken, potatoes/gravy, and the sweetest corn bread I’ve ever had

Jomax BBQ, who wouldn’t trust someone with such a credible looking photo?

Jomax’s chopped BBQ was damn good though. Some of the best I’ve had in a while.

Falafel from the Pita House in Greenville, SC. This place is fairly well known in Greenville. It’s one of the few places in town to serve this style of food, and I think the meats are weak, but the falafel, hummus, and tahini salad are outstanding.

Another time I was driving back to GA from Greenville, I searched for some options in Duluth. When I searched for “BBQ”, Ming’s came up. The duck was solid, and a good value.

The shrimp and red pork chow fun was my favorite though. Love the noodles in their chow fun.

If you’ve never had the yellow sauce of Carolina BBQ, it’s worth a go. This time I am embarrassed to say it’s from Maurice’s. I say that because I did a post on them a year ago and said I wouldn’t go back, but it was convenient one day. Their hush puppies are the best part.

Poppa’s Finest was another iPhone find. It was literally a trailer on the side of the road.

The potato salad was good, but the meat was suspect. As in, there were unidentifiable parts in the meat. I’m pretty sure I ate some plastic, or a really strange cut of meat. Eater beware.

Saigon Fast Food in Greenville is my latest favorite find. A small mom and pop Vietnamese place on East Pleasantburg Dr, the large menu is full of the usual suspects, including many types of banh mi. The first time I got the roasted red pork, but the bread was a little hard.

Next time I went for the shredded pork, and the bread was much better. It was heavy on the fish sauce, but I didn’t mind.

Tanner’s Big Orange is a Greenville fixture, and I couldn’t resist the urge for a chili dog. But the onions rings were fantastic – large, not too greasy, and they stayed very crisp. Worth the visit.