Rodney Scott, the famed pitmaster and chef, will be on scene Monday at the Homewood location of Rodney Scott’s Whole Hog BBQ, greeting customers, signing cookbooks and, of course, cooking some mouth-watering barbecue.

The restaurant at 2701 18th St. South, Unit 100, is starting full table service today, making the transition from fast casual counter service, and Scott is making an appearance to mark the occasion. Look for him from 11 a.m. to “at least 8 p.m.,” a publicist says.

Copies of Scott’s cookbook, “Rodney Scott’s World of BBQ: Every Day Is a Good Day: A Cookbook,” will be available to purchase at the restaurant.

The Homewood restaurant, which opened in 2021, is one of three Rodney Scott’s locations in the Birmingham area, along with eateries in Avondale and Trussville. The menu at all three locations features slow-smoked whole hog barbecue, ribs and chicken served with Scott’s vinegar-based sauce, and sides such as collard greens, hush puppies, coleslaw, baked beans, potato salad and banana pudding.

Scott, from South Carolina, opened his first restaurant in Charleston in 2017, in a partnership with Birmingham restaurateur Nick Pihakis. Scott opened the Birmingham location in 2019, at 3719 Third Ave. South in Avondale, in the former location of Saigon Noodle House and Bottletree Cafe. Two more locations in the Birmingham area followed, all in a partnership with Pihakis.

READ MORE: The story of Rodney and Nick, brothers in barbecue

“What made me think about Birmingham is, that city is growing fast,” Scott said in a 2019 interview with AL.com. “It is a beautiful city. The barbecue scene there has always been mentioned to me by people from Birmingham who would come eat here (in Charleston) and tell me, ‘Have you ever thought about Birmingham?’”

Although Scott lives in Charleston, he has called Birmingham his second home.

“From the first few times we cooked here, the reception in Birmingham has been welcoming,” Scott told Bob Carlton of AL.com in 2020. “It’s been warm. It feels good. I don’t go anywhere I don’t feel good, and Birmingham feels good.”

Scott won a James Beard Award for Best Chef in the Southeast in 2018, for his work at Rodney Scott’s BBQ in Charleston. He was the first Black chef to win the Southeast chef award and only the second barbecue pitmaster to win any chef award from the Beard foundation.

Scott, who’s in his early 50s, grew up in his parents Roosevelt and Ella Scott’s barbecue joint, Scott’s Bar-B-Que, in Hemingway, S.C., and started working there full-time when he was a teenager. In his cookbook, Scott offers anecdotes about his family, his early work experiences and his rise to fame as a barbecue pitmaster.

“Preceding the recipes for smoked whole hog and fried catfish, there are essays that chronicle Scott’s experiences with everything from his first car — a 1985 Nissan 300ZX — to his first onslaught of media coverage, all sprinkled with anecdotes about his father, who was clearly a large influence on his life,” Ben Mims said in the Los Angeles Times. “The book reads like an oral history of barbecue, but one told through a true legendary practitioner who’s experienced his fair share of life, in and out of the smokehouse.”