a place · SCHenry's Smokehouse

An Upstate barbecue house at 240 Wade Hampton Boulevard on the edge of downtown Greenville, opened by Beau Hammond — in 1991 by the company's own account, in 1992 by the Greenville Journal's — in a small building that had been other eateries before. It cooks pork butts twelve hours and ribs six to eight over hickory logs in open pits, hand-pulls and chops the pork, and serves it with two sauces, a mild tomato-based one in the Piedmont manner and a spicy mustard one, with hash and rice on the side. A second house is in Simpsonville and a food truck, Henry's Hog Hauler, travels; the Barbeque Association lists it as 100-Mile Barbecue.

Beau Hammond opened Henry's with a menu so short that the sides were coleslaw and simmered green beans, and a rule he kept repeating: 'You want to be fair to the customer first. The money will come after that.' The house grew, added stores in Simpsonville and on Woodruff Road, and passed to Tiger O'Rourke and Bo Wilder, partners who added hand-cut fries in O'Rourke's years. Playboy ranked it first in the world in June 2002, a line the house still quotes; it took the Upstate readers' award seventeen years running; and in 2024 Southern Living picked it for the state. John Malik, writing in the Greenville Journal in October 2025, found a pulled-pork sandwich with fries and half-and-half tea at about $13 and the fire still built every day: 'You have to baby great barbecue. The fire changes every day... The result of great smoked pork should stay the same.'

Pork butts cook twelve hours and ribs, St. Louis cut, six to eight, in open pits over hickory logs — cured oak and pecan too, by Malik's account — at low temperatures, the fire built and tended all day. The pork is pulled by hand from the bone and chopped; the sauces are a mild tomato-based one and a spicy mustard; hash and rice, a stew of pork over rice, is on the menu with the hand-cut fries. About $13 for a sandwich, fries and tea in October 2025.

Open Monday to Saturday 11 a.m. to 8 p.m. and Sunday 11 to 3 at 240 Wade Hampton Boulevard, Greenville, with the same hours at 123 North Main Street, Simpsonville, per the company's site on September 15, 2026.