Calling the ‘Pigs’: This longtime Columbia restaurant won The State’s 2025 barbecue poll
The smoke has cleared on The State’s 2025 Barbecue Poll, and a runaway winner has emerged.
Readers crowned Little Pigs Barbecue, located at 4927 Alpine Road northeast of Columbia, as their favorite barbecue joint in the area in the recent poll. There were 22 different barbecue places from throughout the Midlands listed in the poll which ran from March 6 to March 12.
More than 20,000 votes were cast. In the end, Little Pigs received 59% of them. The second place finisher, Batesburg-Leesville’s Shealy’s Bar-B-Que, got 20%, and the third place finisher, Lexington’s Hudson’s Smokehouse, got 13%.
The Columbia Little Pigs has been around since 1962, first being located on Rosewood Drive and moving to the Alpine Road spot in the late 1970s. Longtime owner Champ McGee has been associated with the company, in one way or another, since 1969. He said he was thrilled to see the restaurant get so many votes in the recent poll.
“Any time you get any kind of honor, it really makes you feel good that what you do is worthwhile,” McGee told The State.
While there are a host of dynamics that play into running a restaurant, McGee noted there is one particular aspect that has been critical in keeping customers coming back to Little Pigs across the decades.
“Consistency,” McGee said, matter-of-factly. “It’s the same every time you come. If you want to eat at Little Pigs, you want to have the same thing every time you come. So, we try to make it the same. We don’t change recipes, and we do it the same way every time, so that people can come back and enjoy it again.”
There are a number of items on the buffet at Little Pigs, including brisket, ribs, pulled pork, homemade tomato pie, hash and rice, smoked sausage, fried chicken, fried fish and much more. There is even a landing page from the Little Pigs website where you can hear McGee rattle off all the items on the restaurant’s buffet in a rapid-fire, auctioneer style. McGee said the barbecue at Little Pigs is smoked using hickory wood.
McGee noted he heard from a number of customers who said they were voting in The State’s recent poll, including one Little Pigs fan who cast a ballot from another country.
“I have a friend who has a house down in Mexico and they go there all the time,” McGee said. “He sent me a text and said, ‘I voted for you from Mexico.’”
After decades, Little Pigs has become an enterprise that has bridged generations in Columbia, and McGee said he’s always happy to see new and returning customers.
“So many of the [customers] who are coming now, their parents and grandparents came in years gone by,” he said. “We are seeing the third and fourth generation of people.”
This story was originally published March 18, 2025 at 12:54 PM.
