Martin's Bar-B-Que Joint

“Nashville's whole-hog evangelist brings West Tennessee 'cue to James Island”

Pat Martin's Nashville-born operation opened its James Island outpost in May 2019 and imported a whole-hog gospel that runs against the assembled-from-parts convention. The pits fire at 5am, and the hogs cook roughly 20 hours over coal and local hickory before the meat ever hits a plate. It is West Tennessee barbecue set down in vinegar-and-mustard country — an acclaimed out-of-state pitmaster's lone South Carolina room, cooking the slow old way on purpose. The whole-hog pulled pork sandwich is the thesis: smoke worked all the way through meat pulled straight from the animal, not scaled from shoulders. The Redneck Taco — smoked meat piled on a cornbread hoecake — is the signature crowd-pleaser, the spare ribs bring the chew, and hickory baked beans lean sweet and deep. A full bar and five house sauces spanning tomato, mustard, vinegar-pepper, and white let the table settle its own regional argument, one plate at a time.