The Pit – Right on “Que”

Amanda and I were first introduced to The Pit restaurant’s eastern North Carolina style barbeque two years ago at New York City’s Big Apple Barbeque Festival in Madison Square Park.  After tasting The Pit’s memorable chopped pork sandwiches from their street setup in New York City we made sure to stop at The Pit’s permanent restaurant in Riley, North Carolina.

The Big Apple Barbeque is a giant block party in Manhattan where New Yorkers can get an authentic taste of some of the best barbeque from around the country. This New York sized block party happens for one weekend every June and is organized by Danny Meyer’s restaurant company–the Union Square Hospitality Group.  Amanda worked for this company while we lived in New York and two years ago she was able to attain a VIP pass which allowed us “backstage” access to the food vendors and enabled us to meet The Pit’s owner and pit master Ed Mitchell.

Here in New York we first discovered the giant grills or “pits” upon which whole hogs were slowly cooked over hickory coals under Ed Mitchell’s jolly supervision.  The Pit’s motto is that they use “everything but the squeal.”  This motto is fitting for the Eastern North Carolina whole hog barbeque that they do.

Cooking whole hogs  is considered the most challenging form of barbeque because the pig has to be done perfectly from nose to tail.When people say “barbeque” in Eastern North Carolina, they are referring to pit smoked whole hogs chopped and served with a simple sauce of salt, white vinegar and red and black pepper.

Trying Ed Mitchell’s Eastern North Carolina barbeque for the first time was a revelation in simplicity and quality that has since become my personal favorite regional barbeque style.  This is what they serve at The Pit.

The Pitt does food the old fashioned way by serving the highest-quality traditional barbeque around.  Yet the design and service of the restaurant is quite modern, making The Pit a very comfortable place to visit.  The décor simple, sleek and contemporary and the service is extremely professional.  Gone is the notion that the best barbeque can only be found in a shady dive on the wrong side of town.

The meat is smoked with hickory wood on “pits” which resemble large grills, and chicken wire is often placed underneath the pig before cooking so that the tender, nearly falling-apart pig can be easily removed from the pit when done.  After the pig comes off the pit the meat is chopped rather finely to be served as-is or on a bun for a chopped pork sandwich.

At The Pit restaurant, the resulting barbeque is moderately smoky and extremely moist and porky.  It even has a touch of porky stickiness to it that I absolutely love.  As a lover of vinegar and in my food (especially in barbeque) a splash of Eastern Carolina vinegar sauce transforms and elevates the barbeque to the pinnacle of primal passion that can be had in consuming freshly smoked meats.

Of course they serve more than just chopped barbeque at The Pit, and everything else we tried was equally as delicious.  Fatty ribs are cooked quickly on the grill and simply seasoned to really showcase the porkiness of the high-quality meat that they use.  The fried chicken had a glorious crispy exterior and was moist and flavorful within.

The cornbread at The Pit was warm, tender and very “corny”(which is important in cornbread), a side of coleslaw tasted just like the coleslaw my dad makes at home—which is excellent!  And the baked beans at The Pit offered a medley of just-tender beans that were smoky, barely sweet, and endowed with yet more wonderful pork!

To perfect our bliss we ended our meal with an extremely satisfying dessert of moist chocolate cake and vanilla ice cream.  As we left The Pit we admired a life-size portrait of Ed Mitchell holding two little pigs, one under each arm.  After experiencing the extraordinary food and service at The Pit we felt just like those two little pigs, stuffed, happy, and squealing for more!