In 2023, after seven years of operating City Limits as a food truck, Robbie Robinson set down roots in West Columbia. It’s a weekend-only counter service operation, and the Saturday offering leans toward Texas, with brisket, beef ribs, and house-made sausages. Sundays bring a slate of pit-smoked hot dogs made in house from fresh-ground brisket, and Robinson recently added South Carolina-style whole hog into the mix one weekend a month.
City Limits Menu
The Texas-inflected items are as good as any east of the Mississippi—tender brisket with a deep red smoke ring, hot links crackling with red pepper beneath a taut casing, succulent beef ribs that slip from the massive bone into long, delicious strands. The offering shines even brighter when the South Carolina native turns his sights on the local specialties. Pork shoulders are cooked burn-barrel stye over direct heat then chopped fine and dressed with a zippy Pee Dee-style “chop sauce.” Slow-simmered hash sparkles with black and red pepper, and it’s finished with a sweet golden squiggle of mustard sauce.
The old-school standards are joined by an impressive array of contemporary fusions: brisket corndogs fried in beef tallow, beef ‘n queso sandwiches made from pit smoked prime rib, char siu pork belly burnt ends finished with a sweet, fragrant glaze. What really puts City Limits at the front of the pack, though, are the Saturday spareribs, which are cooked directly over a bed of hardwood coals and seasoned with nothing but salt. With pale, irregular surfaces dotted with black bits of char, the homely slabs aren’t much to look at, but the first bite packs a big smoky punch that only grows with each subsequent chew.
Make A Stop In “Smoky Hollow”
It’s all found in the sprawling compound that Robinson has dubbed “Smoky Hollow,” an eccentric complex of structures with a second-story eating porch, a long indoor dining room, and a metal-walled Quonset hut that serves as the Texas-style counter room. Everything you get from that counter is top-notch, too, from massive beef ribs straight down to the house-made pickled onions and candied jalapeños. The green beans are cooked directly beneath the pork bellies on the pit so the rendering juices drip down over them, imparting a kiss of sweet smokiness. Splendid charro beans are enrobed in savory brown broth and finished with a sparkle of cilantro and diced onion. The jalapeño slaw is wonderfully sweet and creamy with only a hint of pepper heat.
Why City Limits Is The Best BBQ In The South
Taken as a whole, City Limits is an exercise in obsessive passion and meticulous devotion to quality. There’s no need for a barbecue joint to grind and smoke its own brisket hot dogs, to slow roast marrow bones for the beef-and-queso dipping jus, or to cook one style of ribs over direct heat on Saturday and another style on an offset pit on Sunday. That over-the-top intensity, though, is what takes City Limits from good to truly great. It’s a thoughtfully-crafted and well-executed dining experience, one that draws upon South Carolina’s time-tested barbecue traditions while taking inspiration from around the South to create its own distinctive style.
For my money, that’s enough to declare it the very best joint in the South…