When Chemists Attack

If you’re traveling down I-95 at the right time, you might want to pull into Exit 98 for some barbecue. There are two barbecue places right near the highway. One is a Maurice’s BBQ Pit Stop – if you want a BBQ sandwich in a hurry. If you have more time, though, you are better off going a little farther off the highway to the Lone Star Barbecue and Mercantile.

Lone Star is located a few miles from the highway on State Park Road. Here’s the sign.

The sign

Pulling into the parking lot, you might at first be put off by the apparent condition of the buildings. That’s actually part of this place’s atmosphere. These are old buildings that have been moved to Santee and converted into a barbecue place.

We’re going to eat in here???

In case you weren’t really sure where to go in, it’s the building on the left.

The main building up close

Walk inside, and you’ll see the buffet line and take-out counter.

The buffet line

It may not look like it in the picture (which was taken from all the way across the room), but the buffet actually has a pretty good variety of food. You can get hash and rice, green beans, bread pudding, fried chicken, slaw, squash, macaroni and cheese, hush puppies, and a couple of more-less traditional dessert items like banana pudding.

Once you’ve gotten your first helping of barbecue, you head into one of the other (connected) buildings to sit down. Here’s what you’ll see.

A view from our table

The walls are filled with … stuff. Unlike the generic fake decorations you’ll find in many restaurants, a lot of the stuff on the walls actually relates to the area – local high school football schedules from the 50s, an old program for a Clemson football game, etc. Some of it you might not recognize unless you’re from the area, but it’s a nice touch.

You might notice the speakers at the far end of the room in the picture above. Lone Star’s dinner entertainment consists of live bluegrass (which they call “country music” here). I have to admit that I’ve never been a really big fan of bluegrass music myself, but it does add to the dinner experience at Lone Star. Thankfully, it’s not loud enough so that you have to shout at each other at the dinner table. Unless, that is, the kids at the next table decide they want to dance.

But enough about the buildings and the bluegrass – you probably want to know about the food. Here it is.

Rick’s plate of BBQ

Like Antley’s in Orangeburg, Lone Star offers pit-cooked pork barbecue with a mild mustard-based sauce. The sauce is very similar to Antley’s sauce, although Antley’s is a bit milder. Both Antley’s and Lone Star sauces have a milder (and better, in my opinion) flavor than Maurice’s BBQ sauce.

If I had to compare Lone Star and Antley’s, I’d say that the BBQ at Lone Star isn’t quite as good as the BBQ at Antley’s, but Lone Star has the better variety of food. With the exception of the hash and the slaw, the side items at Lone Star are a good deal better than Antley’s. If I was just going to eat BBQ, I’d choose Antley’s. If I was eating with someone who didn’t necessarily want to eat a lot of BBQ but wanted more variety, I’d take them to Lone Star.

Patty’s plate

Patty particularly liked the bread pudding, and so did the couple we went to Lone Star with.

If you’d like to go to Lone Star, remember that they’re only open a few days of the week: Thursday to Saturday for the BBQ, and a lunch buffet on Sunday. Since they have a website, you can just look on it for directions and hours.

And if you leave Lone Star early enough, continue down State Park Road and see the water.

Sunset in Santee

This entry was posted on Sunday, May 7th, 2006 at 4:13 pm and is filed under Food. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.