Food on the Street with the Pitt Cue Co.

I am a great lover of Bar-B-Q. Anything to do with meat cooked over burning embers sends me into such highs that I start dribbling. Literally.

To feed this addiction I am forced to cook bar-b-q style foods in my own oven at home, as I do not have a garden and therefore no bar-b-q.

It’s the one thing we want in London. A house with a garden or even a balcony. We had a front porch once and I used to cook bar-b on a small portable cue there. Heaven bloody heaven it was. Ahh how I miss those days in Brentford. It’s about all I miss.

Anyhows I’d heard about the Pitt Cue Co. on the South Bank a few months ago and have been meaning to get my sorry arse down there to check it out, but with work and generally being a lazy shit recently I haven’t managed it. Gotta change that.

My last adventure with street bar-b-q was at the recent Street Food Fest on the South Bank. A video of this day will be released too much pomp and ceremony soon. The bar-b-q I had to be honest was pretty poor. The sauce lacked any real flavour and it looked like the guys woke up that morning and said what shall we do today. I know we’ll do some bar-b-q. It was very lame.

Bodean’s are the big bar-b-q player in London, but with their major expansions (4 branches to date) has left this small chain spiralling downhill, as corners seem to be cut on quality to make up for quantity. Although their smoked hickory and hot chipotle sauces are pretty damn good.

As the Victoria Line was down this weekend, yet again, and the thought of getting on the bus replacement service out of Victoria was just too much to contemplate.

So off I trotted to the South Bank to finally sample this supposed bar-b-q truck heaven. The truck is silver and I want one. I really do. I think this is what I want to do, buy a truck, do it up and sell cheap heart warming comfort food to hungry eaters. What kind of food do you ask. Well it would have to contain every cheap cut of meat known to man. My favourite.

But enough of my dreams, back to the review. I never actually read the menu I just saw on the blackboard pulled pork and I was hooked. The pulled pork comes with either bar-b beans or coleslaw, bread and some pickles. I chose the beans of course. Silly question. And of course there has to be beer as well. Well bar-b-q with out beer is a sin in my books.

It comes in a nice little box and a piece of toasted bread to mop up the juices. I parked my arse down on one of the yellow stalls and tucked in as they say.

To be honest it was underwhelming. I was expecting a whole lot more than with what I got. I was expecting some wonderful smoky taste to dazzle me, instead all I got was a good but average bar-b-q that I reckon had not been smoked at all. Maybe oven cooked with spices.

The pulled pork was juicy and tender, but it lacked any real flavour at all. It was really rather bland. Disappointing. Those pickles however were awesome, they were really bloody good. I need to know where they get them from. Awesome. The bar-b-q sauce was thick and unxious, but the small black beans were slightly undercooked. They were a little too al dente for my liking. It’s just a shame that the star of the show was just so dull, and at £11 for the pulled pork and a beer, it is not cheap street food at all.

But with what London can offer at the moment with bar-b-q it is the best of a disappointing bunch. As I mentioned before it was much better than the bar-b-q truck at the recent street food fest, and the over sweetened bar-b-q ribs around Brick Lane every Sunday.  But not as good as Bodean’s in its hey day, although that place is becoming more miss than hit recently.

But with my slight obsession with bar-b-q no doubt I’ll be back. Hopefully it was a one off. Please let it be.