South Carolina Barbecue Review

South Carolina is the only state that claims all four of the major barbecue sauces, and which one lands on your pulled pork is a matter of pure geography. The state’s signature — found almost nowhere else on Earth — is the tangy golden mustard sauce of the German “Dutch Fork” belt around Columbia and Lexington. To the east in the Pee Dee it’s a thin, fiery vinegar-and-pepper mop; in the Upstate it’s a light tomato sauce; toward the coast, a heavier sweet tomato. Under all of it is the whole-hog tradition of the Black pitmasters who created it. Eating your way across the sauce map — mustard here, vinegar there — is one of the great edible road trips in the South.