West Columbia BBQ restaurant owner reflects on new national attention

Seven years ago Robbie Robinson saw a void in Columbia’s barbecue scene.

Today, he owns West Columbia’s acclaimed City Limits Barbecue, a restaurant that combines Texas-style barbecue and South Carolinian flair.

The idea for the business originated when Robinson was working in the white-collar world and decided he needed a career change. He was drawn to the barbecue scene and, thus, City Limits was born.

For six years, City Limits was a food truck that traveled around the Columbia area.

The truck offered high-quality Texas barbecue because there was nothing like it in Columbia at the time.

“Nowhere anywhere near here is doing Texas barbecue, ‘So why don’t I figure out if I can make that happen?’” Robinson said.

City Limits’ innovation and its journey to a popular brick-and-mortar location, has not gone unnoticed. The restaurant has received several accolades in the past year. It was included on The New York Times “America’s Best Restaurants 2024” list. And Robinson was a semifinalist for the 2024 James Beard Foundation’s Best Chef of the Southeast.

While Robinson is native to South Carolina, he spent time living in Houston, which inspired his cooking.

“I’m from here, but my wife is from Houston, so when we got married in the early 2000s, we lived out in Houston for several years,” Robinson said. “… Texas is incredible. But I also love South Carolina equally. And that’s why we definitely represent South Carolina barbecue on the menu. But we are at our core a Texas barbecue restaurant.”

With a distinctive style in mind, Robinson began to grow his business. Eventually, City Limits transitioned to a brick-and-mortar location in 2023, a decision he believes improved the restaurant on all fronts.

“Moving into the brick and mortar significantly improved the numbers to make it a sustainable business,” Robinson said. “But also from the restaurant aspect of it, getting into muscle memory where you do something daily or weekly, it has so significantly improved the consistency of what we’re serving everybody.” 

Now, City Limits is open only on Saturday and Sunday, offering a different menu and experience each day. Saturday offers a full menu including brisket, half-chicken, and a variety of sides, including apple cobbler and shells and cheese.

On Sundays, the restaurant offers a different experience, turning a lack of production capacity into a more accessible dining experience, with sausages, chili dogs and more.

“You can come in on Saturday, be very well fed, and have a lot of leftovers,” Robinson said. “If you come in on Sunday, you have a completely different experience that’s a lower price point.”

Kim Severson, a food reporter for the New York Times, was responsible for City Limits’ inclusion on the list. She was drawn to the restaurant after getting recommendations from friends. And when she visited, she was immediately impressed.

“It felt right,” Severson said. “I could see how much everybody who worked there cared about the food. And then, of course, it was delicious. So that was it.”

Severson also said she took note of Robinson’s unique style of cooking that blends the past and future.

“I think he respects tradition, and he’s also pushing the form forward, which I think is really cool,” Severson said.

Robinson said the national attention from that kind of praise has shifted his clientele.

“We’ve received a lot of press over the last 12 months,” he said. “And what was different about the New York Times more so than any other was that it really tapped into a different segment of the local and regional population. It wasn’t a barbecue publication. It was a national newspaper. You’re sure seeing that there’s a little bit of a different crowd showing up than what normally comes by.”

But the restaurant’s meat slicer, Zack Woods, said the success has not changed the business in any way other than increased demand.

“We’re doing everything basically exactly the same way,” Woods said. “We’ve just had to cook more food. … That’s what I tell people all the time. We’re not doing anything crazy-special. We’re just making really simple food really well.”

Robinson now is hoping to grow his business even further, possibly even opening a second location.

“What I really, really, really want to do is to have a centralized production cooking all the proteins that are varied that need a little bit more expertise – with the briskets and the pork – then cooking them at a central location and then distributing it out to a secondary location, so that we can better maintain the longterm quality,” Robinson said.

While City Limits has gained many new fans, Robinson still takes time to reflect with regulars who are unsurprised by his recent accolades.

“I bet three to five times a day, I say out loud to one of my friends or family … I say this frequently to a lot of our longtime customers, ‘Can you believe this? Can you believe they said we’re one of their 50 favorite restaurants in America?’ And you know what’s really cool is that every single one says, ‘Yes we can,’” Robinson said.