Joe Bessinger's BBQ

The Bessinger mustard name in the Goose Creek corridor
Joe Bessinger's BBQ is a barbecue restaurant in Charleston, South Carolina.
Joe Bessinger's carries one of the most storied names in Lowcountry barbecue into the Summerville-to-Goose Creek corridor, from a mainstay spot on College Park Road. The draw is lineage on a plate: the South Carolina mustard-based sauce the Bessinger family helped make famous, ladled over classic pulled pork. Weekday hours and a buffet-minded approach make it a workaday lunch and dinner stop rather than a weekend event.
The golden sauce is the throughline. It coats pulled pork with the tangy-sweet edge the region built its reputation on, and hash and rice rounds out the plate the old Midlands way. Fried chicken gives the buffet a second anchor for anyone not in a pork mood. Nothing here reinvents the tradition; the whole point is to keep a famous sauce and a familiar plate within easy reach of the people who live and work up the corridor from Charleston.
- Style: Lowcountry / South Carolina Style
- Price: $
- Neighborhood: College Park
What to order
- Pulled Pork
- Mustard-Sauce BBQ
- Hash and Rice
- Fried Chicken
How it scores — 7.7/10 overall
Visiting
- Address: 1114 College Park Rd, Summerville, SC 29483
- Phone: (843) 875-6313
Hours: Mon–Sat 11am–9pm
360 words
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