In the vestibule of Patriots’ Smokehouse, a wooden bench draped with the American flag bears etched letters that spell out “Home of the Red, White, and Que.” The welcome is more than a clever play on words; the name of the place is sincere. Red, white, and blue bunting rims the dining room, where historical flags evoke the Revolutionary War.
Patriotic decoration aside, I can’t think of a more colorfully American branch of cooking than barbecue. While it is possible to get a hamburger, a salad, or a children’s grilled cheese sandwich at Patriots’, barbecue is what makes this restaurant a treasured destination in the bucolic countryside east of Clarks Hill Lake on the Georgia-South Carolina border. The smell of smoldering hardwood coals and drippin’s from the meat they cook imbues the air all around.
A baked potato and a BBQ sandwich with mustard sauce
I confess suspending whatever sophisticated barbecue connoisseurship I think I possess to order a loaded baked potato. It is a wild mix of flavors, different in every bite, jalapeno chips offering pops of contrast to melted cheese, soft potato, a ribbon of sour cream, two different sauces, onions, and pork. However, if the point of coming to Patriots’ is to eat barbecue (it should be!), this zany potato doesn’t fill the bill. Its modest measure of pulled pork shares space with too many things; and yummy as the mix is, it doesn’t offer unbridled appreciation of true barbecue.
Order a plate or sandwich and you get abundant shreds of smoke-cooked butt that are virtually fatless but ooze flavor, the soft beige meat striated with occasional patches of dark bark.
The question is: To sauce or not to sauce? Delicious as it is, pork alone can become monotonous. Sauce adds sparkle. Mustard sauce shoots tang into tender meat. Hot red sauce tempers pepper’s bite with surreptitious sweetness that makes it taste like a cousin of sriracha.
Hash, French fries and fried onions and baby back ribs
Any apprehension about meat being monotonous is quelled by first-rate side dishes. Smokehouse hash—the world’s least photogenic food—is a heavy slurry of beef and pork that is startlingly sweet, its potency offset by fluffy rice. The crust on fried onions is so frail that it slides off at the lightest touch, revealing al dente fleshy leaves and rings. A menu item called “1/2 & 1/2” pairs the exquisite onions with French fries that are soft logs interspersed with a few skin-on sticks. Potato salad is chunky, its mayonnaise dressing spiked with mustard sauce.
Those interested in gentle chewing will relish Patriots’ baby back ribs. The meat willingly slides off the bone but then wants a bit of jaw work to release its porky juices. On the other hand, minimal dentition is required to enjoy smoked chicken, which comes encased in a flavorful glaze and is too tender for utensils. Once its savory skin is breached, lodes of meat voluntarily detach and tumble away. Brisket is that tender, too, asking to be gently lifted up, flap by flap. It is ridiculously juicy, although the smoke flavor that makes chicken and pork glow is obscured by its deep beefiness.
If you like dessert, come to Patriots’ on Thursday. (It is open only on Thursdays, Fridays, and Saturdays.) That’s the day nearby bakers deliver the weekend’s breads and cakes. One time when I arrived for early lunch on Saturday, only two loaves of bread remained; sweet tea cake and pecan cake had been eaten up the night before; and just one slice of banana pudding cake remained.
I squeezed the bread, which really did feel day-old. However, I snagged that last slice of banana pudding cake, which was as soft as if it had been baked just hours before. What was most wonderful about the cake was its frosting. At first glance, it looks like something from a jar, but taste buds rejoice to discover it is the real thing, made from scratch, smooth and faintly sticky, an ideal complement for cake that includes bananas and Nilla wafers.
Patriots’ dining room is crowded with tables offering local artisans’ crafts that include scented candles, coffee mugs, tea towels, egg cartons, and T-shirts. Along with merchandise for sale are mementoes and displays that include a guide to Revolutionary War weapons and a small shelf that holds a ceramic pig figurine accompanied by a taxidermist’s calling cards and an illustrated children’s Bible.
Background music is an eclectic country mix of Elvis ballads, vintage standards (think Patsy Cline and Tammy Wynette), and spirituals (“Joshua Fit the Battle of Jericho”). I finished my barbecue listening to a modern song whose singer boasts about his truck’s maximum tonnage.
Patriots’ Smokehouse: 2006-1/2 Martintown Road, Clarks Hill, South Carolina, 803-613-6221
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