16 Home Cookin’ Spots: Chicken Bog, Barbecue and the Grand Strand’s Family Tables

Chicken bog, pulled-pork barbecue and fried chicken share the daily buffet menu at Back Home BBQ in Murrells Inlet. Collards and green beans keep them company, with rice and gravy ready for a place on the plate. Behind the meal is owner Pattie Gordon, whose family ties to this address reach back through its earlier businesses.

The dishes have people and working lives behind them: a grandmother cooking bog in a wash pot, a boy opening drinks in his family’s barbecue business, a couple whose cafeteria still makes Friday the day for bog. These 16 Southern AYCE stops in Buffet Authority’s Myrtle Beach collection stretch from Little River south to Georgetown, with inland stops in Longs, Conway and Aynor. Several give the day of the week an excellent edible argument.

A big pot before the buffet pan

Chicken bog—chicken, rice and sausage cooked together—was feeding crowds long before it reached the buffet line. In Loris, a historic marker records its communal role by the 1920s, traditionally after tobacco gathering in northeastern South Carolina. The foundation’s accompanying account describes large pots cooking over a wood fire. Its photograph shows Paul and Randall Winburn with a cast-iron wash pot they remember their grandmother, Mattie Griggs Winburn, using for bog. A pot big enough for the people who helped bring in the crop had a practical purpose.

Rice also carries a wider coastal history. The National Park Service’s account of Gullah Geechee culture describes the detailed rice-production knowledge of enslaved Africans from rice-growing regions and the forced labor through which plantation owners profited from it. Gullah Geechee cooking and other cultural traditions continue today. Crediting that knowledge belongs alongside appreciating the region’s rice dishes.

At Back Home, Gordon’s 2025 account of the restaurant makes family work concrete. She described running the front with her three daughters, while kitchen manager Roberto worked with members of his family. Longtime employee Louise had been there for nearly two decades. Gordon also connected the property to an earlier drive-in where her mother worked in the 1960s.

The daily buffet carries bog and barbecue through the week; Sunday lunch has its own attraction. Turkey and dressing with giblet gravy, roast or ham, and broccoli or squash casserole make up the Thanksgiving-style special. Apparently the calendar can be persuaded to cooperate once a week. Sunday lunch runs from 11 a.m. to 3 p.m.

Barbecue runs in the family

In Conway, Big D’s BBQ Trough supplies another family history with an unusually practical beginning. The restaurant’s own account recalls Russell Davis at age 12 when the family business began in 1973. His jobs were opening drinks and cleaning up. The Conway location followed in July 2013. A childhood restaurant job became part of a much longer working life.

The buffet menu gives that history a distinctly South Carolina expression: pork in two named preparations, Original vinegar base and Sweet Mustard base, both included at lunch and dinner. Diners can entertain two sauce allegiances over one meal without convening a legislative hearing. Friday’s chicken and pastry is a lunch addition, available until it runs out; dinner adds ribs, catfish and hog jowl. Those are persuasive reasons to choose the meal as well as the restaurant.

The Dew family’s barbecue story leads inland to Radd Dew’s Bar-B-Que Pit in Aynor, where an old schoolhouse houses the buffet. In Lindsay Dew Tompkins’s account of the family business, her grandfather turned the grocery into a barbecue operation in 1965, and successive generations kept it going. The house sauce combines white vinegar, mustard and Worcestershire; a tomato-based preparation gives the chopped pork another treatment. For the barbecue enthusiast, that family recipe is a reason to make the inland drive.

Thursday and Saturday belong to the ribs

Quigley’s Pint & Plate on Willbrook Boulevard in Pawleys Island advertises Saturday all-you-can-eat baby back ribs with fries, coleslaw and a choice of dinner salad. Its covered patio beside the pond at Mingo gives the meal a setting worth lingering in. The pub’s broader menu gives the rest of the table other ways to order, so the devoted rib eater can have company without recruiting everyone to the cause.

At Broadway at the Beach, PopStroke Myrtle Beach adds Thursday’s Rib Rally to the week’s barbecue options: all-you-can-eat ribs at its full-service restaurant. Two outdoor putting courses let a group combine the rib meal with a round of mini-golf.

A weekday worth choosing

Mama Jean’s Restaurant puts the weekday menu to especially good use. Mike and Emily Speros opened the Little River restaurant in 1994; the operator’s history describes Mike growing up in a North Carolina restaurant family. Today, the cafeteria gives that country-cooking background a schedule.

Squash is a good example of why the day matters. Monday’s version is fried; Wednesday’s is stewed. For a fried-squash enthusiast, Monday is a recommendation all by itself. Friday brings bog, barbecue pork and collards, with a small quirk in the paperwork: the menu files chicken bog under vegetables. The chicken appears to have negotiated a departmental transfer.

Monday through Friday, staff serve the cafeteria food, and diners can choose the in-house all-you-can-eat option, advertised on the lunch menu at $16.50 with tea and bread. Ask for that option when ordering. Saturday and Sunday lunch switch to a self-serve buffet.

Back in Murrells Inlet, Judy Boone’s Family Traditions Kitchen gives dinner a similar sense of occasion. Its posted specials board puts livers and gizzards at Tuesday lunch, hamburger steak with onions, peppers, mushrooms and gravy at Wednesday dinner, brisket at Thursday dinner and Mississippi pot roast at Saturday dinner. Chicken bog and chicken and dumplings appear among the board’s regular favorites. A midweek hamburger steak has a perfectly respectable claim on the evening.

Simply Southern Smokehouse brings bog into Myrtle Beach itself, on Mr. Joe White Avenue. Its buffet menu pairs the rice dish with pulled pork and chicken and dumplings, while butter beans and tomato and okra give the vegetable choices their own interest. Lunch runs Tuesday through Saturday; Friday and Saturday add evening service. Ribs start at 4 p.m. while they last, followed by fried pork chops. Banana pudding and a cobbler of the day supply the sweet finish.

The country dinner has a coastal address

Sea Man’s Seafood on Highway 9 in Longs gives country cooking equal reason to join the seafood outing. Fried chicken shares the regular self-serve buffet with Calabash-style fish and shrimp, while fried yellow summer squash and fried okra bring the country meal into the vegetables. The smaller dining room suits a local supper with company whose food preferences differ; chicken and seafood can share the table easily.

In Surfside Beach, Southern Chicken builds its modest self-serve country buffet around fried chicken, macaroni and cheese and collard greens. The Highway 17 stop suits an appetite for a chicken dinner with substantial cooked sides. A beach-town lunch can make a persuasive case for greens and macaroni, too.

Farther south, Deborah’s Kitchen on South Island Road in Georgetown offers the country-cooking lunch in a smaller local setting. Fried chicken and collards are joined by red rice and black-eyed peas in the buffet repertoire described by Georgetown’s tourism office. For rice enthusiasts, the tomato-seasoned red rice supplies another coastal preparation alongside the bog found farther north.

Conway’s Carolina Calabash makes country cooking a substantial part of its seafood-and-Southern buffet on Church Street. Hamburger steaks, collards and baked macaroni and cheese give the country meal its own entrée and accompaniments; sweet potato crunch casserole adds another preparation beyond the usual potato-and-gravy plate. It is a useful address when one person’s idea of supper is a hamburger steak and another’s involves fried fish.

Pass the bowl again

At Broadway at the Beach, Paula Deen’s Family Kitchen delivers the unlimited Southern meal to the table in serving dishes. Its Myrtle Beach dinner menu lets the table choose two, three or four entrées, depending on the package, plus four sides. Fried chicken, hand-rolled chicken and dumplings, pot roast with buttered white rice and chicken-fried pork chops are among the choices. Refills apply to the chosen dishes, making the shared decision part of supper. Collards and fried okra can have their own serving bowls. Dessert is a separate purchase.

Familiar names, substantial country meals

Golden Corral on Oak Forest Lane earns a place through the country dinner within its broad buffet. The Myrtle Beach location’s lunch and dinner menus list fried chicken, meatloaf and pot roast, with cabbage, mashed potatoes and gravy, and sweet corn pudding among the sides. The familiar national name can settle a group decision while leaving plenty of room for a Southern meal. Pot roast and corn pudding make a fairly effective peace treaty.

Shoney’s on North Kings Highway offers the all-you-care-to-eat Fresh Food Bar, with fried chicken and meatloaf defining its country-cooking repertoire. The Myrtle Beach restaurant serves breakfast and lunch. For anyone whose Shoney’s memories begin with the breakfast bar, lunch offers another way to revisit the familiar name.

Sunday gets a soundtrack

House of Blues Myrtle Beach, in North Myrtle Beach at Barefoot Landing, makes its Southern buffet part of a performance. The Sunday Gospel Brunch combines all-you-can-eat Southern favorites with live gospel music; chicken and waffles is its signature food pairing. Continuous seating runs from 9 a.m. to 1 p.m., and reservations are recommended. This is a Sunday meal for people who would enjoy a stage sharing their attention with the table.

Across the Strand, the day can lead to a different country-table pleasure: Monday’s fried squash, Friday’s bog, Saturday’s ribs, Sunday’s turkey and dressing. The family histories put people behind those dishes. The menus give you an excuse to put another lunch on the calendar.