A question conjured in smoke: How good is West Columbia’s City Limits Barbeque, really?
For West Columbia’s City Limits Barbeque, the current moment feels like a contradiction in pace.
On the one hand, there is the agonizingly deliberate approach to actually smoking the meats — brisket, pork, ribs, etc. — that are central to the menu at City Limits, the barbecue joint at 1119 Methodist Park Road that is known for its Texas- and Carolina-style offerings.
Owner and pitmaster Robbie Robinson and his crew are often out there in the wee hours of the morning, smoking the meats low-and-slow over wood coals. It’s a delicate, meticulous dance that requires just the right amount of time and just the right amount of heat.
But on the other hand, there’s the explosion of attention and popularity City Limits has experienced in the last couple of years, particularly as the restaurant has gotten effusive acclaim from some of the top publications and organizations in the U.S.
For instance, City Limits — which started as a food truck in 2016 and moved into the brick-and-mortar spot on Methodist Park Road in 2023 — was named one of the South’s best new barbecue joints in 2024 by Southern Living, landing at No. 4 on the magazine’s top 22 list. Then there was The New York Times, which tabbed City Limits as one of the 50 best restaurants in America for 2024, calling it “the place students of regional smoked meat dream of.”
Texas Monthly, meanwhile, had City Limits on its 2024 list as one of the best Texas-style barbecue joints located outside of Texas. The magazine scoured 149 different Texas-style barbecue joints across 37 states to come up with its final list of 53 restaurants.
And then there are the nominations for James Beard Foundation Awards, the highest and most prestigious honors in the restaurant industry. The Oscars of the food world, as they have been called. In 2024, Robinson was a James Beard finalist for Best Chef: Southeast. And in 2025 he has been named a semi-finalist for the same honor. The Beard Foundation is set to announce the finalists for this year’s awards on April 2.
Robinson said navigating the swirl of acclaim has been a balancing act. City Limits strives for excellence — the chef often emphasizes his aspiration to serve customers “the perfect bite,” a mark he and his crew pursue with dogged tenacity. Now, they must take in stride honors they didn’t necessarily see coming, while maintaining the attention to detail and quality that attracted the notoriety in the first place.
“With James Beard, that’s the goal, to be recognized for excellence,” Robinson recently told The State. “But, we are not doing what we do to win a James Beard Award. It’s kind of the guiding light, if you will. And some of these things, like the New York Times thing, come out of left field.”
The blitz of plaudits City Limits has recently received might naturally lead those who haven’t yet made their way to the restaurant, or those who haven’t explored many barbecue joints outside the Midlands, to question whether Robinson truly achieves the excellence for which he strives.
In other words: Is City Limits really that good? Rather than judging by our own taste buds, The State reached out to some barbecue experts to get their take.
‘Carolina way’
When it comes to barbecue, Robert F. Moss wrote the book. Like, literally.
Moss is the author of a half-dozen books on the restaurant and food industry, including “Barbecue: The History of an American Institution” and “Barbecue Lover’s The Carolinas: Restaurants, Markets, Recipes & Traditions.” He also has been a restaurant critic for The Post and Courier and he’s the contributing barbecue editor for Southern Living. Moss has spent his adult life roaming the South and the U.S. exploring barbecue and other food traditions.
During a recent conversation with The State, Moss said Robinson is “one of the up-and-coming barbecue restaurateurs and pitmasters we have right now.” Moss pointed specifically to City Limits’ brisket, saying he would “stack it up with just about any brisket in Texas” and adding that the brisket is “certainly right up there with John Lewis [of Charleston’s acclaimed Lewis Barbecue] as the best in South Carolina.”
But Moss notes there are many places these days doing Texas-style barbecue — or so-called “craft” barbecue — and said that alone wouldn’t make City Limits so ascendant. The fact that the West Columbia establishment also reverently pays homage to the barbecue traditions of the Carolinas is what helps elevate it a bit further, Moss said.
“There are so many people opening Texas-style barbecue joints these days,” Moss said. “That’s the craft barbecue thing. What makes Robbie really special is, he has that Texas influence, but he roots it in South Carolina, and is really serious about also representing where South Carolina barbecue came from. He has fantastic hash, for instance.”
Moss also referenced Robinson’s “Carolina way” of cooking ribs over direct heat.
“Some of the best ribs I’ve ever had,” Moss said, matter of factly. “He just really nailed it.”
Jim Roller runs the website Destination BBQ, which tracks barbecue restaurants across South Carolina. The site even includes a barbecue trail map and a directory of barbecue joints listed by city. He is the author of the book “Going Whole Hog: Mustard, Vinegar, Hash, and Smoke: Celebrating SC BBQ History, Traditions, and Flavors.”
Roller pointed out the regional duality of City Limits — the Carolinas spin on Texas stylings — and said that has been key to the restaurant’s appeal.
“The way I see it, it’s because Robbie is doing things the right way — low-and-slow over wood, fully respecting the traditions of SC BBQ, but not limiting it to the confines of one BBQ heritage,” he told The State in an email. “Because of the way Robbie is doing things, I think it validates the history SC BBQ is built upon, while recognizing influences from elsewhere.”
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A banana pudding tale
A few months ago, I was out at City Limits on a Sunday afternoon — the restaurant is only open from 11 a.m to 5 p.m. on Saturdays and noon to 3 p.m. on Sundays, and when they sell out of something on a given day, it’s out.
I had a brisket hot dog and some mac-and-cheese. And I grabbed a side of banana pudding to go.
At some point during the meal, Robinson’s wife Blair — a key player in running the front-of-the-house side of the operation during those weekend services — approached the table and had another carton of banana pudding in her hand. Robbie wanted to swap out the pudding I had originally received, Blair said, because the pitmaster had “detected a texture anomaly” in the first batch.
(For what it’s worth, I gave the new carton of pudding to a seatmate that day, and kept the one with the supposed “texture anomaly” for myself. Even with that suspected anomaly, it was the second-best banana pudding I’ve ever had in my life, behind only my late Grandma Trainor’s version.)
Robinson chuckled when I recalled the pudding story to him in a recent conversation.
“Sometimes I will see the anomaly,” Robinson said. “Part of what I’m good at is pattern recognition. Texture of a banana pudding, for instance, even though it’s not zeros and ones, it’s not a traditional pattern, the texture of it is supposed to be really smooth. That’s the pattern of banana pudding. I remember what happened with that. We didn’t properly mix the corn starch. So the corn starch clumped a little bit. And no amount of whisking was going to smooth it out.
“So, we had to track down where the lumpy ones went and swap them out for the smooth ones, because we had the opportunity to do so.”
Now, that may seem to be a one-off story, an example of a dedicated restaurateur working to make something right, in his eyes. But, in a sense, it speaks to the exacting, sometimes almost obsessive attention to detail for which Robinson has become known when it comes to City Limits.
Columbia’s Charlie Barrineau has long been a barbecue enthusiast, having visited barbecue joints across the nation, including in the Carolinas, Georgia, Tennessee, Texas and elsewhere. A field services manager with the Municipal Association of South Carolina, he is the former city manager in Greenwood. During his time in Greenwood, he was one of the key organizers of that city’s SC Festival of Discovery, an annual Kansas City Barbeque Society-sanctioned barbecue competition event that features nearly 100 pitmasters from across the U.S.
Barrineau has frequented City Limits and said the attention to detail is readily apparent, not only in the smoked meats, but in the various sides and special items that go along with it.
“He has put attention and quality into every single item on that menu, up and down,” Barrineau said. “Robbie and his team, they obviously put a lot of attention into tradition. He fully understands, whether it be Texas or whether it be Carolina, he immerses himself in that tradition and ensures it is wood, pit-cooked.
“And all of the sides, I mean good night, all of his sides are amazing. And he puts some twists in there with his [brisket] corn dogs and he adds some uniqueness that is next level.”
’Going for the authenticity’
For Carl Blackstone, barbecue is a family affair. Currently the CEO of the Columbia Chamber, Blackstone grew up in eastern North Carolina, where whole hog barbecue and vinegar-based traditions reign supreme. In a recent conversation with The State, he recalled friends and family cooking hogs all night during his youth.
These days, Blackstone said he often visits City Limits on the weekends, and when he goes with his wife and kids, they have a family rule.
“When we go as a family, everybody has to order something different and we share,” Blackstone said, with a little laugh.
The Columbia Chamber CEO — who noted the acclaim City Limits has received in the last couple of years has been good for the region as a whole — said the food is only part of the appeal. Another key aspect is the communal nature of those weekend services, where people line up — the waits can be considerable in the early part of the day — and chat with one another as they inch toward their smoky reward.
“I think what people are drawn to is the authenticity,” Blackstone said. “You are going mostly for the food. But it’s a little bit of community. You are waiting in line, you get to talk to people around you. ... It’s tucked away, it’s not on a busy street. You are going there just because you know that place exists and you are going for the authenticity of an old school barbecue place. It’s a throwback in some ways.
“I think people like the fact that it takes you to a different time, where you go out to eat and you meet people and you talk to people.”
For Robinson, the idea of sparking memories of family traditions is part of the motivation. He hears it during the special monthly whole hog services at City Limits, or when someone tearfully tells him the collard greens remind them of their grandma’s version.
He said those connections are part of what keeps things humming at the Methodist Park Road location, which he affectionately calls “Smoky Hollow.”
“Particularly when we do whole hog, people will come in and we’ll show them the pit room and they’ll say, ‘Oh, this is how my granddaddy did it, but he had a brick pit and he did two pigs every Fourth of July,’” Robinson said. “A lot of people have those stories about how being at Smoky Hollow and City Limits brings back some of those memories.
“I think, for long-term success, those memories, whether they are created at City Limits or if is triggered at City Limits, that it is going to keep us in the front of people’s minds to keep on coming back, as long as we maintain our consistency and quality.”
This story was originally published March 31, 2025 at 11:11 AM.
