Great American Bites: Whole-hog barbecue at N.C.'s The Pit
— -- The scene: Located on a side street in downtown Raleigh's warehouse district, The Pit is a locally renowned barbecue place specializing in pit-cooked "whole hog," a North Carolina tradition in which an entire pig is slowly smoked in a closed grill, or pit, for many, many hours. It is then chopped up, usually mixed with a vinegar-based sauce, and served as sandwiches or simply a pile of meat, a unique chopped take on the much more common stringy "pulled pork," made from a pig's shoulder or Boston Butt rather than the entire pig.
Today whole-hog barbecue is hard to find even in North Carolina, where it is mainly the stuff of weekend church picnics and fundraisers. Given the notion of taking such a huge smoking process indoors, and given The Pit's name and reputation, a visitor might expect, well, a pit, or a colorful hole in the wall roadside eatery. But The Pit is decidedly modern, even a bit upscale, with plenty of exposed brick and glass and even a hostess stand. It is more a place for a business lunch than the kind of dark and smoke-stained temple of barbecue I typically visit, and only a few tables have a view of the kitchen window in the back wall behind which the chefs do all their chopping. The good news is that if you are not the kind of eater who likes dirty roadside shacks, self-service and plastic (or no) utensils, then The Pit is welcoming and comfortable, with first-rate service and Southern hospitality.
Reason to visit: To try chopped pork, desserts.
The food: As a huge fan of both pork and all kinds of barbecue, I really wanted to like The Pit, but for the most part, I was disappointed. The signature dish, chopped pork from the whole hog, was dry and not very flavorful. While most pulled pork comes from the darker Boston Butt and is intrinsically moist, this utilizes many parts of the pig, including the drier more white-meat parts, and lacks succulence. It is served with a bottle of eastern Carolina-style vinegar sauce, the same as comes on the meat, but this presented a conundrum - adding enough to make the meat suitably moist made it taste way too vinegary, so the choices were dry and dull or moist and acidic. They also feature numerous other barbecue choices, but the classic Carolina pulled pork was also nothing special, and the tomato-based western Carolina sauce served with it was merely average. I didn't expect much from the beef brisket, a real Texan specialty not widely seen in the Carolinas and I was right - it was dry, bland, and far from tender. The best were the barbecue chicken and ribs, both baby back and spareribs.
I've had other versions of chopped pork, and my take is that it simply is not as good as pulled pork, a dish that you can find excellent examples of throughout the Carolinas. The seductive texture of the pork is lost in the chopping process, ending up with something more like pork hash. But if you want to try this regional barbecue specialty, The Pit is an easy place to do so, since they always have it on the menu, which not many restaurants do. The good news is that their appetizers, sides, salads, and especially desserts are all solidly good, and skew towards the upscale and gourmet end of the barbecue spectrum, with options such as pumpkin skillet cornbread, fried pimento cheese balls with spicy pepper jelly and panko crust, or Southern-style deviled eggs. They also have regional stalwarts like Brunswick Stew and fried green tomatoes.
