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Top-notch barbecue
Book names Smokin Pig 1 of the countrys best
bbq-joint
Smokin Pig co-owner Kevin Fabre and employee Kim Bragg pull pork in the restaurants kitchen. The time-consuming process pays off, as a new book rates Smokin Pig as one of the top 10 restaurants in the country for pulled pork. - photo by Photo by Paul Floecker
By Paul Floeckher
Updated: Jun 5, 2015, 1:16 AM
Published: Jun 5, 2015, 1:23 AM

A new book deems Smokin Pig as one of the best barbecue restaurants in the United States.

Not bad for a venture that began as just a hobby.

Smokin Pig, which has locations in Richmond Hill and Pooler, made the list in author Johnny Fugitt’s book “The
100 Best Barbecue Restaurants in America.” The barbecue critic wrote the book after visiting 365 restaurants across 48 states in a year’s time.

“For the guy to visit as many barbecue places as he visited and to choose us as one of the favorites, we’re pretty proud,” said Kevin Fabre, who owns Smokin Pig along with his father, Clyde Fabre.

Fugitt used research and recommendations to decide which restaurants to visit. He then scored them based on the quality of meat, sides, sauces, atmosphere and barbecue “it” factor.

“A friend in the Savannah area said Smokin Pig was THE place to go for good barbecue,” Fugitt wrote. “I took his recommendation, connected with owner Kevin Fabre and was glad I did.”

Kevin and Clyde Fabre opened the Smokin Pig in Richmond Hill in 2007. Situated on Highway 17, next to a gas station just off Interstate 95’s exit 87, the restaurant is nothing fancy to look at from the outside.

“It’s a typical hole-in-the-wall barbecue place,” Kevin Fabre said.

What sets it apart is the Fabre family recipes. For years prior to opening the restaurant, Kevin had been cooking barbecue pork for groups of friends or corporate events.

The Fabre father and son started Smokin Pig simply as a side venture to supplement their incomes. Kevin was working full-time in sales and Clyde was running his own business, Coastal Garage Doors.

“We opened up in spring of ’07, and two months later we both quit our other jobs because it took off,” Kevin said. “We’ve been blessed here in this town.”

Business has remained strong. The Fabres opened a second Smokin Pig on Highway 80 in Pooler in 2010, and the Richmond Hill location expanded its hours about a year ago.

“(Customers) are here about 10 o’clock in the morning, about an hour before we open, trying to get in the door,” said Smokin Pig employee Kim Bragg.

Smokin Pig’s menu includes ribs, chicken and beef brisket, but the signature dish is the pulled pork. The Richmond Hill restaurant cooks as much as 300 pounds of Boston butt per day, according to Kevin Fabre, and it is all hand-pulled after it comes out of the smokehouse. The end result for customers is a lean, tender serving of pork.

“A lot of barbecue places pull the bone out and chop everything together, and you get fat and gristle,” he said. “We take our time and hand-pull it.”

Fugitt agreed with Fabre’s assessment. He ranked Smokin Pig No. 8 on his list of America’s 10 best restaurants for pulled/chopped pork.

“Without a doubt, the thing to get at Smokin Pig is the dry-rubbed, hand-pulled, lean, smoky pulled pork,” Fugitt wrote. “Add a little bit of the spicy vinegar sauce and you have yourself a bite that will make you squeal with delight.”

For those with a different taste in barbecue sauce, Smokin Pig’s mild sauce dates back four generations, according to Fabre. That was the original sauce served when the restaurant opened its doors, and original-recipe hot, sweet and spicy sauces have since been added.

A common barbecue side item guests won’t find on the menu is french fries — or anything fried, for that matter. Because of the cost and upkeep of fryers, Kevin and Clyde Fabre opted against having any when they opened the restaurant.

Instead, they offer sides that are all homemade from “good country recipes,” Kevin said — potato salad, coleslaw, macaroni and cheese, green beans, baked beans, corn on the cob and Brunswick stew.

“We’ve made it eight years without frying anything,” he said. “We basically just took barbecue the way we do it, we grabbed a bunch of our moms’ and aunts’ and grandmas’ recipes and put them as side dishes, and opened the doors. And here we are.”

Kevin and Clyde Fabre spend plenty of time together running the business, and Kevin described them as being as much good friends as they are father and son. The family atmosphere carries over to Smokin Pig’s other employees.

“Once you work here, you don’t want to leave,” Bragg said. “It’s better than a franchise. It’s a mom-and-pop place.”

Some of Smokin Pig’s employees started working there as teenagers and are in their 20s now, Fabre said. Having minimal employee turnover and keeping familiar faces customers see on repeat visits has been good for business, he added.

“We try to treat our people good, and they take care of us,” he said.

Smokin Pig
• Where: 3986 Highway 17, Richmond Hill
• Hours: 11 a.m. to 8 p.m. Sunday and Monday, 11 a.m. to 9 p.m. Tuesday through Saturday.
• Phone: 912-756-7850
• Email: smokpig@gmail.com
• Web: www.smokinpigbbqjoint.com

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Later yall, its been fun
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Ted O'Neil
Updated: May 23, 2018, 6:03 PM
Published: May 23, 2018, 6:05 PM

This is among the last pieces I’ll ever write for the Bryan County News.

Friday is my last day with the paper, and come June 1 I’m headed back to my native Michigan.

I moved here in 2015 from the Great Lake State due to my wife’s job. It’s amicable, but she has since moved on to a different life in a different state, and it’s time for me to do the same.

My son Thomas, an RHHS grad as of Saturday, also is headed back to Michigan to play basketball for a small school near Ann Arbor called Concordia University. My daughter, Erin, is in law school at University of Toledo. She had already begun her college volleyball career at Lourdes University in Ohio when we moved down here and had no desire to leave the Midwest.

With both of them and the rest of my family up north, there’s no reason for me to stay here. I haven’t missed winter one bit, but I’m sure I won’t miss the sand gnats, either.

Shortly after we arrived here in 2015, I got a job in communications with a certain art school in Savannah for a few short months. It was both personally and professionally toxic and I’ll leave it at that.

In March 2016 I signed on with the Bryan County News as assistant editor and I’ve loved every minute of it. My “first” newspaper career, in the late 80s and early 90s, was great. But when I left it to work in politics and later with a free-market think tank, I never pictured myself as an ink-stained wretch again.

Like they say, never say never.

During my time here at the News, I’ve covered everything that came along. That’s one big difference between working for a weekly as opposed to a daily paper. Reporters at a daily paper have a “beat” to cover. At a weekly paper like this, you cover … life. Sports, features, government meetings, crime, fundraisers, parades, festivals, successes, failures and everything in between. Oh, and hurricanes. Two of them. I’ll take a winter blizzard over that any day.

Along the way I’ve met a lot of great people. Volunteers, business owners, pastors, students, athletes, teachers, coaches, co-workers, first responders, veterans, soldiers and yes, even some politicians.

And I learned that the same adrenalin rush from covering “breaking news” that I experienced right out of college is still just as exciting nearly 30 years later.

With as much as I’ve written about the population increase and traffic problems, at least for a few short minutes my departure means there will be one less vehicle clogging up local roads. At least until I pass three or four moving vans headed this way as I get on northbound I-95.

The hub-bub over growth here can be humorous, unintentional and ironic all at once. We often get comments on our Facebook page that go something like this: “I’ve lived here for (usually less than five years) and the growth is out of control! We need a moratorium on new construction.”

It’s like people who move into phase I of “Walden Woods” subdivision after all the trees are cleared out and then complain about trees being cut down for phase II.

Bryan County will always hold a special place in my heart and I definitely plan on visiting again someday. My hope is that my boss, Jeff Whitten (one of the best I’ve ever had), will let me continue to be part of the Pembroke Mafia Football League from afar. If the Corleone family could expand to Vegas, there’s no reason the PMFL can’t expand to Michigan.

But the main reason I want to return someday is about that traffic issue. After all, I’ll need to see it with my own eyes before I’ll believe that Highway 144 actually got widened.

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