Willie Jewell’s Old School BBQ

Last night was a Lowcountry BBQ meatup at the fairly new Willie Jewell’s Old School BBQ up in North Charleston.

Willie Jewell’s is located in a little strip mall almost across the street from Wannamaker County Park. It’s not a very large place, but is pretty decent looking inside. Definitely not the hole in the wall shack type places you typically associate good Lowcountry BBQ with.

The menu has a pretty good variety to choose from, but I went for the pork supper plate, which turned out to be a pulled pork sandwich (with a pretty good sized portion of pork) served open face and two sides. I went for the baked beans and mac and cheese.

The pork was deliciously tender and very smoky. I think it’s some of the smokiest tasting BBQ I’ve had so far. Just check out that smoke ring.

The sides were kind of meh, although the baked beans were pretty good. The mac and cheese seemed to be just macaroni with salty cheese sauce poured on it. Ok, but there’s better out there. I got the impression that the sides were somewhat inconsistent. A few people in the group ordered the coleslaw which they said was really good before, but was pretty bad this time. The corn fritters, little fried nuggets of battered corn, were pretty tasty though.

The sauces are served warm in pump dispensers on a counter across from where you place your order. There are 4 sauces to choose from: traditional, sweet and tangy, classic mustard-based and a hot and spicy one. There’s also ketchup and regular mustard too, but I don’t recall seeing anything on the menu that you’d want to put them on. I probably just missed it though.

I went for the traditional and hot sauces. Don’t think I really liked the traditional sauce a whole lot, but the hot BBQ sauce was pretty decent. It tasted like it might have been mustard based as well. Really though, the pork stands up pretty well on its own and didn’t need any sauce at all.

If you’re in the area and develop a hankering for BBQ, Willie Jewell’s is definitely worth stopping at. Based on comments from the others, it seems like they still need to work on the sides to make the quality more consistent though. Prices are pretty reasonable though.

3.5 stars out of 5.