BBQ students visit Scott's, give high rating

The Southern BBQ Boys loved the ambiance of the family operated, old-fashioned store. Here Ella Scott sells some pig skins to a customer. Scott's cooks about 25 hogs on a good week.

By: | SCNOW
Published: January 19, 2009

HEMINGWAY - Four college students from Birmingham, Alabama, who are doing a study on Southern barbecue styles, visited Hemingway Thursday. They toured the pits at Scott's BBQ at Brunson, took a movie for You-Tube, then tasted the low-country picked-pig and pronounced it the most authentic of all they have tasted in their tour.
Art Richey, one of the students, told The Observer it was the best sandwich he'd had. "Too bad it's so far out of the way, so many people can't experience it."
"It had a perfect spicy flavor, and heat that you could feel in your mouth for several minutes. This will be the standard against which all the other BBQ places will be judged," he said.
Their 17-day-excursion through the southern states is just to sample barbecue for a course they are taking at Birmingham Southern University. Hemingway became one of their two stops in South Carolina. They had planned additional stops but time was running out, so they bypassed planned visits to Florence and Lake City, but caught Scott's on advice of a relative, then visited one more place in Holly Hill before departing for Georgia. They've already been to a number of spots in Tennessee, Kentucky and North Carolina.
They are not only taste-testing all the styles of barbecue, but also are checking out the ambiance of the places that serve it. Scott's was pronounced authentic, with "nothing flashy. This is as country as country can be. This is it. Scott's is one of the few places where you can still experience and taste the real South, the South that writers romanticize about and cooks try to imitate," they reported.
Richey, along with fellow students Will Foster, Jeff Vaughan, and Matt Lee call themselves the "Southern Barbecue Boys" and have a web site at http://www.southernbbqboys.com/, as well as a blog and a series of You Tube videos. Their class is not about culinary training, but actually an English class, and they will focus on travel writing to tell the story of BBQ in words, music and images.
Owner Rosie (Roosevelt) Scott was disappointed that he was away when the students visited. He's been doing BBQ at the same spot since about 1973, with hand built pits and an old-time recipe that's come down in his family. "I just watched my uncle do it to learn how," said Rosie
"We do it the hard way," he said. "We still use hardwood to cook ours; a lot of others are using gas to do it.
Richey agreed that the wood made a difference. "You can sure taste it. It was a really neat experience."
The students had one bad experience when their driver Matt got a bad batch of ribs in North Carolina and came down with food poisoning. "He was down for a couple days, but he was a trooper and he's back driving now," said Richey.
Maybe they should have skipped North Carolina and focused on South Carolina.

BBQ students visit Scott's, give high rating

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