Best Barbecue in My Business Directory

Game Day BBQ sits along Main Street in Duncan, one of the small Upstate towns between Greenville and Spartanburg. Its athletic theme traces back to the start: the restaurant grew out of a barbecue catering operation run by a former high school football coach who had long wanted a place of his own. That streak still shows in the flags for Clemson, the Gamecocks, and hometown Byrnes High around the room, and the football usually on the big-screen TVs. The kitchen smokes its meats the old-fashioned way, over nothing but hickory and oak. The menu runs through the Carolina standards, from pulled pork to brisket to plates like the Duncan Hog served with your pick of homemade sides. Brunswick stew, BBQ beans, mac and cheese, and potato salad fill out the rest, most made in house. Reviewers keep landing on two things: generous portions for the price, with more than one describing a BBQ sandwich heaped over the bun, and food worth the drive, including a visitor who came from over the North Carolina line. With the big screens, the space for groups, and the come-as-you-are feel, it suits an afternoon spent catching a game with a few friends over a plate of barbecue.

Before Greenville and before Charleston, John Lewis was one of the pitmasters who helped launch Franklin Barbecue in Austin, the place a lot of people point to when they argue about the best brisket in the country. That pedigree is why the line out front moves slow and nobody seems to mind. His Central Texas brisket is the signature, cut to order and sold by weight, and it is the plate most tables build the rest of the meal around. The board rewards a group. There is the "Hot Guts," a mostly beef house sausage with real heat, plus a second sausage packed with green chile and cheese, lightly glazed spare ribs, sliced turkey, and pulled pork for anyone who came in wanting something closer to Upstate home. The El Sancho Loco piles all three smoked meats onto one bun. Regulars learn to chase the daily specials too, including a Texas sized chicken fried steak with green chile gravy and a house cured pastrami on rye, both of which run only until they sell out. Small touches separate it from a standard plate joint. Every order comes with a trio of house sauces and a cup of pickles and onions so you can dress each bite your own way, and the sides carry their weight. The corn pudding, a cheesy Hatch chile cornbread casserole, is the one reviewers tend to name first, with cowboy pinto beans, collards, and mac and cheese close behind. The patio is dog friendly with heaters for cooler nights, there is a bar with its own short menu when the main line looks long, and the kitchen takes on catering. Reviewers are close to unanimous on the meat, and a health score up in the high 90s backs the open, watch them work kitchen. Two honest notes before you go. Service is order at the counter, so a real wait at peak hours comes with the territory. And while the smoked meats themselves are gluten free, this is not a dedicated gluten free kitchen, so anyone managing celiac should ask the counter about cross contact before ordering.

Smoky Dreams is the little red building at the corner of Woodruff Road and Highway 14, the kind of spot most of us have driven past a hundred times on a shopping run before finally pulling in. A family started it back in 2014 on a simple idea: rubs and sauces made from scratch, and meat smoked over wood every day. They have run it under the motto "where everyone is family" ever since. The heart of the menu is the smoke. Brisket, pulled pork, smoked chicken, ribs, and wings, all cooked low with their own seasoning blends until they pull apart clean. The sides are half the reason people keep coming back, from mac and cheese and potato salad to Carolina hash, a sharp vinegar slaw, and the sweet potato crunch that regulars single out by name. Soups rotate with the season, and there is creamy lemon pie and peanut butter pie waiting if you save room. The catering arm is real, not an afterthought, which is where the rest of the name earns its keep. The brisket in particular has built a following among Upstate folks who take their barbecue seriously. Ask ten regulars for their order and you'll get ten answers. Finding yours is the whole point.

The Soul Roll tends to get ordered before anyone has fully settled in: a house creation of greens and pork served with sauce, the sort of thing you won't find spelled out on many menus. It shares the board with brisket, burnt ends, ribs, hand-pulled pork, and smoked wings, plus a rack of BBQ sauces brought to the table so you can dial in your own plate. These days Smitty's cooks from a downtown Easley storefront on East Main, a move from its original Calhoun Memorial Highway spot, though the approach hasn't changed since Allen Smith opened in 2018 after teaching himself brisket on a smoker he'd bought on sale. The catering side and the food truck carry the same plates out to weddings, events, and at-home gatherings around the Upstate. Reviewers keep singling out the brisket and burnt ends as some of the best smoked meat around here, backed by the old-school mac and cheese, seasoned greens, and jalapeño cheddar cornbread a lot of us grew up on, with banana pudding and peach cobbler to finish. It was voted Best New Restaurant of the Upstate in 2023 and has since drawn a widely watched BBQ eating challenge to its counter. Work your way across the smoker and the sides enough times and you'll land on the one favorite that's yours to defend.

Set among the shops off Orchard Park Drive, Local Cue is hard to sum up in a line, because it runs several places at once: a sports bar with wall-to-wall TVs, a real pool hall, a house-smoked barbecue kitchen, and a grown-up game room stocked with darts, shuffleboard, foosball, ping pong, indoor cornhole, retro arcade cabinets, and a few hundred board games. The kitchen holds its own. Everything runs through the smoker, and the wings have built a following that reaches past this corner of Greenville, with the brisket, the cheese tots piled with beer cheese, and the fried pickles close behind. A large gluten-free menu and a deep draft list round it out. Worth knowing before you go: Local Cue runs as two spaces, a 21-and-up sports bar and a separate all-ages family side, so it fits a late night out or dinner with the kids. More than a decade in, the thing people mention as often as the food is the service, with servers who come across as attentive and glad to be there. Portions run large and prices stay fair, and there is an event space and catering when you want to host. With this much under one roof, you will sort out your own corner of the place, and your usual order, a few trips in.

Little Pigs has held its spot on South Main in Mauldin since 1986, and the setup tells you what it is before you order: walk up to the counter, pigs decorating nearly every corner, no table service and no pretense. There's a drive-through for anyone pressed for time. It's a place that decided long ago the food would carry it, and in Mauldin it has. The smoke is hickory, the pork comes chopped or pulled, and the ribs pick up a real bark before any sauce goes on. You choose your own at the counter, from mild and hot to a vinegar and a mustard base that reads as pure South Carolina. Burgers hold down the menu for anyone who didn't come for barbecue, and the catering side has been feeding Upstate events for decades. The sides do a lot of the work. Reviewers talk up the hushpuppies, the baked beans, and the onion rings as much as the meat, and the banana pudding and sweet tea have their own following. Lunch stays cheap, the daily special especially, and the line moves fast enough to get you in and back out on a work break.

Bobby's runs a Central Texas-style pit in the middle of the South Carolina Upstate, and the method sets the tone: meat smoked over real wood in offset pits, with no gas or electric assist, which is what earns a place its True 'Cue certification. It is a lean, family-run operation in Fountain Inn that smokes a few days a week rather than trying to be everything at once. The board runs to brisket, beef and pork ribs, pulled pork, smoked turkey, and house-made sausage in both an original and a jalapeño-cheddar version. Sides are made from scratch, corn pudding and mac and cheese among them, and there is craft beer and hard cider to go alongside a tray. The restaurant grew out of a seasoning company. Owner Tay Nelson started Bobby's as a spice blend in 2010, taught himself to smoke, built it into a catering business, and opened the Fountain Inn restaurant in 2018. The original all-purpose seasoning, along with a citrus blend and a BBQ rub, is still sold by the bottle next to the food.