Barnes has cooked on Waters Avenue for over 45 years by its own count. It describes pit-cooked barbecue with a homemade secret sauce and fresh, regional Southern food prepared daily. It is a daytime room that closes at 4.
BowTie calls itself a scratch kitchen, a whiskey bar and a neighborhood institution, and says the sauces, rubs and sides are all made by hand on Waters Avenue. It carries forward recipes from Johnny Harris Restaurant, the Savannah barbecue house with roots going back to 1924 ... including a batterless fried chicken the venue describes as naturally gluten-free. It opens at 7am daily and runs food trucks for events. The site does not name the wood.
Carey Hilliard hitchhiked to Savannah from Jesup and opened his first restaurant in 1960 in a converted root beer stand, where he and his wife Kathleen kept curbside service going instead of switching to a drive-thru. The company calls itself Savannah's oldest family-owned restaurant. This Southside room opened in 1976 near Savannah Mall, with tall booths, a neon sign and a banquet hall behind it for 60 to 250 guests. It serves until midnight every day.
Erica Davis Lowcountry is a dine-in and takeout room on East Victory Drive that grew out of a catering business. The family's seafood trade goes back to 1946, when Erica's grandparents, Mr. and Mrs. Russo, sold fresh seafood to Savannah. Erica and Dwight carry it on with Lowcountry boils, oyster roasts, barbecue and Southern home cooking, and the site lists Best of Savannah awards for 2022, 2023 and 2024.
BellyUp Savannah / BBQ
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Carey Hilliard hitchhiked to Savannah from Jesup and opened his first restaurant in 1960 in a converted root beer stand, where he and his wife Kathleen kept curbside service going instead of switching to a drive-thru. The company calls itself Savannah's oldest family-owned restaurant. This Southside room opened in 1976 near Savannah Mall, with tall booths, a neon sign and a banquet hall behind it for 60 to 250 guests. It serves until midnight every day.
Pitmaster Terren Williams is a Savannah native who cooked in Atlanta kitchens, then spent ten years in Dallas, Texas learning to smoke meat before coming home. His site says he burns a blend of oak and pecan and buys from local farmers. After about three years as a food truck and a short stay on Waters Avenue, Slow Fire is building a permanent room in a former gas station at 37th and Habersham, the old Baby's space, and serves from the truck there Thursday through Saturday in the meantime.
Wiley and Janet McCrary spent nearly two decades on the competition barbecue circuit before opening in a strip mall on US 80. The site describes the style as St. Louis-style barbecue. Rachel and Eric Traub and their team run it now. The site cites a Southern Living readers' poll that ranked it first in Georgia and second in the country, and Savannah Magazine's Best Savannah BBQ seven years running.
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