Sweatman's is cooking with gas

And purists aren't too pleased about it

A pulled pork plate served at Sweatman’s on March 3/ Photos by Hanna Raskin

In a bid to keep its doors open, one of South Carolina’s most storied barbecue destinations has shut down all but one of its pits and installed a Southern Pride cooker.

Sweatman’s Bar-B-Que, which started cooking whole hogs over freshly split oak and hickory in 1977, switched its last operational pit over to gas during the pandemic. While that pit is still used to convert pig skin to cracklins, the legendary Holly Hill, South Carolina restaurant this year started producing its barbecue in a gleaming stainless steel hybrid device.

Although the switch hasn’t previously been reported, traditionalists among Sweatman’s fans—which is probably a redundant expression—have noticed.

“The negativity brought on from the weekly bombardment of complaints is sometimes unbearable,” owner Chris Behr wrote in an email declining The Food Section’s request for an interview, citing the long hours he’s putting in at the understaffed restaurant. “We are legitimately trying our best to not price out every struggling local that can’t afford to pay what I’d have to charge to split and burn several tons of wood a week.”

Sweatman’s new cooker is powered by gas and wood.

For decades, many restaurant owners paid dismally low wages to wood-prep crews and skilled cooks who handled the greasy, sweaty, dangerous work of minding the pits. If everyone in the old-style system was compensated fairly, Behr estimates he’d have to charge about $50 for a plate, a price at odds with barbecue’s essential democratic character.

But if traditional barbecue can’t coexist with ethical labor practices, should Southerners accept its simulacrum? As Texas Monthly barbecue editor Daniel Vaughn sees it, while Sweatman’s is hardly alone in sloughing off the costs and logistical challenges that come with wood, some hallowed pits might be better off closing than adopting cost-saving measures.