Best Fishing Meal of 2023 – Palmira’s Complementary ‘Cue
In many cases barbecue culture breeds elitism and purity tests. Texans live and die with sausage and brisket, usually with no sauce. In the Carolinas it’s about pork, but even there there’s a division among devotees of chopped, minced and sliced. In Owensboro, it’s mutton. There is of course value in high standards, but sometimes it just seems so damn arbitrary.
The Robbins clan has had a three-lunch day in Lockhart, Texas. We went out of our way to dine in Lexington, North Carolina on the way home from a Bassmaster Classic. Any time a new king of the smoker is announced within a reasonable drive of our Virginia home, we’re headed there post haste. And despite that backdrop, from my one taste of Hector Garate’s Palmira Barbecue in South Carolina, I found the perfect intersection of quality, reverence for tradition, and exceptional inventiveness. Rather than sticking to one lane, it was the mixing of flavors that made the meal so transcendent.
Garate, of Puerto Rican descent by way of a Carolina upbringing and a barbecue apprenticeship in Texas, melds all of those cultures across a greater number of meats – brisket, pork, sausage, and most notably his signature beef cheeks. I found that the variety, rather than diluting the attention of each element, served to build a palette. A bite of the guava pork belly bites immediately after finishing the heavily peppered and barked beef cheeks both cut the heat and accentuated its power.
If the idea of barbacoa or beef cheeks freak you out, get over it, man. The juice is worth the squeeze on these atypical cuts. If you can’t get past it, though, look to the ribs. The beef ribs in particular looked like something out of the Flintstones. I saw a guy go up and literally order a single rib, which reminded me of Chris Rock’s best scene from “I’m Gonna Get You Sucka.” It was, however, more than enough for a meal for a normal human being with a typical appetite.
Sometimes great barbecue places put so much emphasis on their meat products that the side dishes get only passing thought, or none at all. In some of the most traditional Texas smokehouses, in addition to the absence of sauce you may only get white bread (or crackers), onions and jalapenos as flavor additions. There may be no utensils, either. Garate’s sides, however, show great versatility, attention and cultural fluency. I enjoyed the Carolinian hash and rice, as well as his grandmother’s arroz con gandules. Indeed, Palmira, the name of his past and future restaurant, is an ode to that same grandmother. The star for me, however, was the silky and sweet collards, which again cut some of the pepperiness. They were sweet enough to be a dessert, yet not saccharine in flavor.
My introduction to Palmira took place at a pop-up at the Odyssey Bottle Shop on James Island, which meant that we were able to further accentuate the flavors of the meal with a wide variety of draft, bottled and canned beverages. I visited with the members of the Free Fly Apparel team, which allowed me to truly test the stain resistance of their garments. It also meant that we got something of a private audience with Free Fly Ambassador Garate, who patiently explained the origins of his craft and his philosophy on proper food. As with the blending of flavors, it was the perfect mix of nerding out on precise ingredients and temperatures, along with a visceral passion – because while in some respects barbecue can be reduced to numbers and figures, and raw materials, the distinguishing characteristic is always personal vision and obsession.
Charleston has become a barbecue hotspot, and by Garate’s telling it is largely a collaborative and supportive environment. He talked favorably about many of his competitors. You can do that when Southern Living magazine places you among the south’s top 50 barbecue joints. He will soon be reopening his restaurant in Charleston, so while the pop-up opportunity may be disappearing, in the future his food should be more accessible to more people. We will be back. And yes, I realize that there’s still some time left in 2023, so while I can’t guarantee that this will be my best fishing meal, it’s going to take a herculean effort to top this one.
