Port-A-Pit BBQ

Word of warning: Port-A-Pit is open only Wednesday and Friday from 11am to 7pm. During those precious hours, it can get mighty crowded.

A strange, warehouse-like place where most of the rest of the week is devoted to cooking pig either on premises or elsewhere for large events and parties, you enter it through an inconspicuous door in back where arriving customers are greeted by a lady who asks, “Do you’all have a call in?” If the answer is yes – meaning you have already phoned in your order – you are directed to one area of the building to pick it up. If no, you are pointed to the cash register, where you choose from a wall-mounted menu. When your number is called, pick up what you’ve ordered, all neatly packed, then go somewhere to eat it. There are no seats here, inside or out.

We sat in our car and very much enjoyed a chopped pork sandwich, which comes wrapped with a cup of sauce on the side. Pre-sauce, the meat has a nice fresh, slightly smoky flavor but it is dry. The sauce makes this pork blossom. In addition to chopped pork, we savored a nice barbecued chicken upper (the polite term for a breast and wing), crusty pork ribs, and a cup of delicious Brunswick stew, loaded with vegetables and vigorously spiced.

Those who are snack-food devotees will be pleased to note that Port-A-Pit offers six different flavors of pork skin, sold by the bag. It is hard to describe the irresistible appeal of pork skin, except to say it is something like a very piggy potato chip, and it is every bit as addictive. Port-A-Pit offers skins in these flavors: Plain, Cajun, Sour Cream and chives, Vinegar and Salt, Barbecue, and Cinnamon and Sugar.