a place · SCBobby's BBQ

A Texas-leaning smokehouse on North Main Street in Fountain Inn, Greenville County, owned by Octavius Nelson, called Tay, and his wife Sarah. Brisket, pulled pork, ribs, turkey and house-made sausage come off the pits; there is no hash and no buffet, which sets it apart from most South Carolina barbecue houses. The name is for Tay's father Bobby Nelson Sr. and his brother Bobby Jr., both dead before the business began. A seasoning line came first, in 2010; the restaurant followed.

Tay Nelson started working with his father in a Greenville restaurant at twelve. Bobby Nelson Sr. died in 2008 and Bobby Jr. in 2009, and what Tay built next was assembled out of what they left him: he blended a seasoning from the spices his father had used, sold it from 2010, and taught himself to smoke from tutorials on the internet. The restaurant opened in 2018, though the business's own page dates the barbecue side to 2014 and the seasoning to 2010, so the anniversary depends on which thread is counted. The ownership line is unusually plain, in the business's own words: Bobby's BBQ is owned by Tay Nelson and his wife Sarah. That is the sentence the woman-owned tag here rests on. What the record does not carry is a Black-owned tag. Nothing on the business's own pages uses the phrase, EatOkra does not list it, and a Post and Courier piece that might have settled it returned an error on two attempts. The press the business does have is broad and national — ABC News in 2020, Tamron Hall in 2021, a Forbes gift guide, a Google economic impact report — rather than the barbecue-world kind.

Brisket, pulled pork, ribs, turkey and house-made sausage, in the Central Texas manner rather than the Midlands one: no hash on the menu, no mustard tradition, no buffet. The seasoning blend that started the business in 2010 is still sold. Cards and cash are both taken. The kitchen runs four days, Thursday to Saturday, and the smoke is wood, on the strength of the certification rather than any published description of the fire.

Open Thursday to Saturday, 11 a.m. to 8 p.m., closed Sunday to Wednesday, at 1301 North Main Street, Fountain Inn. Both the restaurant's own site and the OpenStreetMap harvest agree on the address.