Robbie Robinson: City Limits BBQ (West Columbia, SC)

Augusta Road in West Columbia, SC, isn’t a storybook setting. Strip malls are lined up down the road, flanking a Wal-Mart and a sprawling old school U Haul campus. But just keep going and turn off the road at the Aldi and there’s a  summer camp style building tucked in some trees and a modest BBQ sign. That’s when you know you’ve reached the city limits, City Limits BBQ to be exact. Owner and pitmaster Robbie Robinson grew up in nearby Red Bank, SC eating his fill of SC Midlands BBQ. While living in Houston in the early 2000s, he acquired his first Texas-style offset wood smoker and began his journey to unlock the subtle mysteries of smoking meats. He’s been serving the people of West Columbia for eight years, including the last year in this building on the edge of town, a town that he is representing this year as a James Beard Foundation finalist for Best Chef: Southeast. Every time we visit, we end up at the smokers, where we get down to the business of conversation. And I invariably mispronounce chicharrons, which you’ll hear here. I’m working on it, I promise.