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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Owner Keith Latture describes the style as Savannah barbecue with Memphis influences. Meats are smoked over pecan and hickory and come with three sauces: a sweet Memphis-style, a mustard-based Savannah sauce and a spicy vinegar sauce in the western North Carolina manner. The Brunswick stew gets singled out in the reviews the site quotes. The site notes that its downtown Streamliner diner location has closed and points everyone to Ferguson Avenue.
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.
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