Hudson’s Smokehouse

March 5, 2009

It’s like a hobby gone wild, says Robin Hudson as he looks around Hudson’s Smokehouse.

Inside the restaurant – especially on the patio – you feel as much like you’re in a favorite beach bar as in the typical barbecue joint. There are as many pictures of palm trees and parrots around as there are pigs, and the live entertainment is as likely to be beach music or modern rock as bluegrass and blues. That eclecticism is not that surprising, though, when you learn that Hudson’s Smokehouse the restaurant is just the most visible part of Hudson’s smokehouse the business.

What began as Robin Hudson’s avocation of cooking for family and friends has grown into a catering business that’s taken him as far away as Colorado to serve John Madden and the Sunday Night Football crew; from Hudson and his wife, Barbara, to a family-wide enterprise with over 50 employees,
and from a small trailer on the side of Highway 378 to a sprawling restaurant that’s gone through several additions and is still bursting at the seams with hungry customers.

We’ve been in the catering business since 1995, and we’ve had the restaurant here for four years, Hudson said. But catering is, I guess, our first love and still my favorite part of the business.

The restaurant menu has all the smokehouse favorites you’d expect: slow-smoked pork, beef brisket, ribs, fried chicken and catfish. But the catering menu covers everything from filet mignon to chicken cordon bleu to bacon-wrapped quail.

Our printed catering menu is just a starting point for event planning – we’re ready and able to do whatever the customer needs within their budget and time frame, Hudson said.

From working lunches for five around a conference room table to backyard barbecues and oyster roasts to corporate events and wedding receptions, Hudson’s can handle all sizes and types of events. And people are starting to take notice.

In 2002, we earned first place honors in a Low Country BBQ competition and when Turner South did a feature on the Food Network in 2003, we were voted as one of the top 4 barbecue restaurants in the Southeast, says Hudson. In 2008, we were voted as Best Barbecue in the Columbia Free Times and Columbia Metropolitan magazine.

But no matter how big the business grows or how many celebrities drop in for dinner, something else entirely drives Robin Hudson.

This really is all about family, he says. My sons are working with me now, along with a long list of nieces, nephews, cousins and great friends. I’m really trying to build this business for them, and in a few years, I want to be behind the scenes while they’re running this thing.src=/wp-content/uploads/img/Hudsons-2.jpg

Robin Hudson, Clay Hudson, Clint Hudson