a place · SCBessinger's Bar-B-Q

A Bessinger family barbecue house at 1602 Savannah Highway in Charleston's West Ashley. Thomas Bessinger came from Holly Hill to Charleston with his brother Melvin in 1955, opened his own restaurant in 1960, and in 1961 the brothers opened Piggy Park Drive-In on the highway; renamed Bessinger's in 1971, it is run by Thomas's sons Tommy and Michael. It serves chopped pork in the family's mustard sauce, ribs, hash and rice, and a buffet on weekend evenings, and the South Carolina Barbeque Association lists it as 100-Mile Barbecue — a house worth a hundred-mile drive. It is the Charleston branch of the family whose Columbia branch is Maurice's Piggie Park.

Joseph Jacob 'Big Joe' Bessinger traded the family cow, a mule and fifty dollars for the Holly Hill Café in 1939 and served mustard-sauced barbecue there. After the war his son Melvin put his Army pay into a second Holly Hill restaurant, Eat At Joe's, in 1946, and the younger Thomas — born in Orangeburg in 1931 — started cooking there at fourteen. Thomas joined the Army after school and cooked two years overseas for soldiers. In 1955 Melvin closed Eat At Joe's and moved to Charleston, bringing Thomas; Thomas opened his own restaurant there in 1960, and in 1961 the brothers opened Piggy Park Drive-In on Savannah Highway together. After ten years they renamed it Bessinger's — The Barbecue Family. In 1982 Melvin crossed the Cooper River to open Melvin's in Mount Pleasant, and the brothers went their own ways. When their brother Maurice raised Confederate flags over his Columbia restaurants in July 2000, the press described the Charleston brothers' businesses as independent concerns, 'sans the politics'; grocery chains that dropped Maurice's sauce stocked Melvin's, and Maurice stopped speaking to him. Thomas Bessinger Sr. died on November 10, 2023, at ninety-two, with the restaurant in his sons' hands.

Chopped pork dressed in the family's yellow mustard sauce, from a pit behind the building; ribs, St. Louis cut, wet with the same sauce; hash over rice that the Barbeque Association's listing rates 'very, very good'; and onion rings the size of a doughnut. The buffet runs Friday and Saturday evenings and Sunday midday.

Open seven days, 10:30 a.m. to 9:30 p.m., with the buffet Friday and Saturday 5:30 to 8:30 p.m. and Sunday noon to 8, per the Barbeque Association's listing; OpenStreetMap recorded 11 to 9 in November 2023. 1602 Savannah Highway, Charleston. Checked September 15, 2026.