‘The very best mac and cheese’. A new barbecue restaurant will open soon. Here’s where
Drew Doss is confident in his recipes.
“We’re gonna have the very best mac and cheese in all of Horry County,” he said. “I can promise you that.”
The alleged best mac and cheese and other barbecue dishes will be the backbone of Carolina Forest’s newest restaurant.
Fullbelly BBQ will open its doors to the public, hopefully as soon as August 7. The new restaurant will have its own in-house barbecue smoker and drive-thru. The dining area will be able to seat 50-60 people at once.
Fullbelly was opened to give Carolina Forest a barbecue-only eatery, Doss said.
“We just wanted to bring that to Carolina Forest, and not just any barbecue, but really great barbecue,” he said.
The restaurant is owned by Ruben Luster, Aaron Hocin and Vince Coletta. Doss will serve as director of operations. The trio of owners also run Tavern In The Forest, Tavern In Surfside and Indulge with Doss serving as director of operations at all three.
A North Carolina native, Doss is the right person to lead a barbecue restaurant. Doss said his father has been in the restaurant business “my entire life,” and he first began working as a barbecue smoker when he was 12.
“And I’m (now) 40,” he added. The new eatery is directly influenced by those family ties. Some of the recipes at Fullbelly’s will be those of Doss’s grandmother.
“It’s something that I grew up on my whole life. That’s part of why we’re so passionate,” Doss said. “Every Sunday, (my family) went over (to my grandparents’ house) for lunch, and she always had about twice as much food as we’d ever need.”
Notable features of the menu will be pulled pork or chicken, Texas-style brisket and St. Louis-style ribs. All food will be cooked on-site in a Southern Pride Smoker, which Doss said costs “north of” $25,000.
“There’s not a lot of things that veer away from barbecue,” Doss said. “We kind of deviate from that with the sides. It’s mac and cheese, baked beans, coleslaw, collard greens, green…
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