Scott, Rodney

Impact on the world

Won the James Beard Foundation's Best Chef: Southeast award in 2018, becoming only the second barbecue pitmaster in the award's history to receive a James Beard chef honor, after opening his own Charleston, South Carolina restaurant the previous year specifically to escape mounting conflict with his father over creative control of the family's original Hemingway, South Carolina barbecue stand; he went on to expand Rodney Scott's Whole Hog BBQ to locations in Birmingham, Atlanta, and Nashville, was featured in a dedicated episode of Netflix's 'Chef's Table: BBQ,' and published 'Rodney Scott's World of BBQ: Every Day Is a Good Day' in 2021, the first cookbook ever published by a Black pitmaster.

Life & background

Born in Philadelphia in 1971 to Roosevelt and Ella Scott, an only child, Scott relocated with his family to South Carolina's rural Pee Dee region in 1972, where his parents built a small business empire near Hemingway encompassing a gas station, variety store, farm, and barbecue restaurant; raised on a philosophy he later summarized simply as discipline and hard work, with no time off from chores or the family business while school was out, he cooked his first whole hog at around age eleven, an experience that initially felt like just another chore before gradually becoming a genuine calling he nonetheless resisted fully embracing until he returned to the family business at seventeen. A glowing 2011 New York Times feature by Southern Foodways Alliance writer John T. Edge transformed Scott's Bar-B-Que from a remote local institution into a nationally recognized destination, drawing food pilgrims willing to navigate the unpaved roads leading to the family's restaurant, but as Scott's own reputation grew through invitations to events including the Charleston Wine + Food Festival, tension mounted with his father over who actually deserved credit for building the business into a destination; his father reportedly told him directly that since Scott hadn't started the restaurant, he wasn't entitled to credit as 'the barbecue guy,' and suggested Scott simply leave and open his own place. Scott took that advice in 2017, partnering with restaurateur Nick Pihakis to open Rodney Scott's Whole Hog BBQ in Charleston, a move that led directly to his James Beard Award the following year but that, by his own account in subsequent interviews, permanently fractured his relationship with his father, who would reportedly turn his head away rather than acknowledge Scott in public afterward; Scott has said the move was nonetheless worth it for his own mental health and his family's wellbeing. He went on to expand his restaurant group across the Southeast, served as a judge on Food Network's 'BBQ Brawl,' and published his memoir-cookbook hybrid in 2021 specifically to preserve in writing a barbecue tradition that had previously been passed down only orally within his family, continuing to describe his core philosophy as treating barbecue not merely as food but as a vehicle for genuine human connection he calls 'barbecue hospitality.'

Sources

1. NPR; Peter Millar Journal; Food Republic; Southern Smoke; Destination BBQ