Forging His Own Path: Puerto Rican-born Hector Garate (above left) has been incorporating Caribbean flavors into Palmira’s menu, including his sofrito half chicken and chuletas can-can, a tomahawk-style pork chop.
Written by Robert F. Moss
Photographs by Peter Frank Edwards
When Hector Garate of Palmira Barbecue started cooking barbecue, he looked first to Central Texas for inspiration. “I got an offset smoker,” he recalls, “a little Oklahoma Joe’s, and I started cooking in my backyard. I started learning brisket, the Texas style. I put a lot of time and energy into it, and then I met Marvin Ross.”
Ross is the fifth-generation farmer at Peculiar Pig Farm in Dorchester County, where he and his family raise heritage hogs on wooded lots. The two struck up a friendship in 2020, and soon they started cooking barbecue together. Ross introduced Garate to the burn-barrel style of whole-hog cooking and to making South Carolina’s signature side dish, hash and rice.
“The first [Palmira] pop-up was more like a collaboration with Marvin,” Garate says. “I was doing more of the Texas-style stuff, and he was doing more of the Carolina stuff.” Garate soon started making the “Carolina stuff,” too, using hogs he bought from Ross. Lowcountry-raised pigs quickly became the heart of his operation.
“Without whole hog,” Garate says, “Palmira doesn’t work.” He’s passionate about using every last bit of the animal, which imparts intense, beguiling flavors to Palmira’s side dishes. The hash begins with the heads of the hogs, which he smokes on his pits then blends with spices into a thick, rich stew. The leftover bones and the skin are transformed into a rich broth in which the collards are slow-simmered.
In the fall of 2021, Garate opened the first brick-and-mortar version of Palmira inside the Port of Call food hall downtown. He decided to omit brisket from the menu and serve beef cheeks instead. In part, this was to stand out from the many other craft-barbecue operations serving slow-smoked brisket, but there was a more practical consideration, too. “I always want to get quality over quantity,” Garate says. “The cheeks—I can get really good quality; I’m like the only guy buying them in the Carolinas.”
(Left to right) Dino beef ribs with sazón; beef ribs and barbacoa toston.
Garate was born in Puerto Rico and raised near Raleigh, North Carolina, and as his Palmira pop-ups evolved, he began incorporating more and more flavors from his Caribbean heritage. Arroz con gandules (rice with pigeon peas) is now a regular side, and his beans get a bright orange hue from a base of sofrito.
Those flavors shine brightest in Palmira’s sausages, which are Puerto Rico-meets-Texas-meets-Carolina mash-ups that can’t be found anywhere else. The rosy-hued cotechino uses scraps from the hog heads with floral accents from allspice, cinnamon, and white wine. The pionono (inspired by Puerto Rican stuffed plantains) is made from a grind of beef cheek trimmings mixed with sweet plantains, sofrito, and chunks of Gouda.
“I had to make my barbecue stand out,” Garate says. “You are inspired by the Carolinas, and you are inspired by Texas; but at the end of the day, you are who you are, and your influences are what’s going to make you distinct.”
The Port of Call location in the heart of the tourist-thronged Market Street offered some advantages, like letting lots of different people discover his barbecue. But it was hard to convert them to regular customers. “You’re a tourist,” Garate says, “You try [Palmira], and you’re like, ‘This is the best barbecue I ever had.’ But then you leave, and you come next year.”
Pop-up Pitmaster: In June, Hector Garate rolled Palmira’s Cen-Tex smoker into the lot of West Ashley’s House of Brews.
He soon began scouting for a stand-alone brick-and mortar location. Last fall, he came across the long, low-slung brick building on Ashley River Road that was previously occupied by Sunflower Café. It seemed like just the spot. “I wanted something that had a neighborhood feel,” Garate says. “And I found it. It’s great because there are so many neighborhoods around. It’s a community, and I want to have a real barbecue joint—somewhere you can come, and it’s down to earth. It’s not super fancy or nothing, it just speaks barbecue to you.”
Garate hopes to open the new location this summer.
Palmira Barbecue
2366 Ashley River Rd.
palmirabbq.com
WATCH - Hector Garate cooking for a crowd
