On our recent trip to North Carolina, we had flown into Charlotte arriving in the late afternoon after a delay in Detroit. After picking up our rental car, we took off toward Winston-Salem, our destination for the first weekend we were there. However, my wife was famished from having little to eat since breakfast and we decided to stop somewhere along the way to get some Carolina barbecue. I brought my personal GPS with me and east of Charlotte near the city of Concord I did a quick look for barbecue places in the area. The first name that popped up was a place called The Smoke Pit. We took a chance on it, pulled off the interstate and a few moments later we pulled up in front of The Smoke Pit.
With Concord also being the home of the Charlotte Motor Speedway, we were in the heart of NASCAR country. And The Smoke Pit has a NASCAR connection with co-owner Devin Barbee.
Devin Barbee started out in motor sports in the mid-80's after graduating from high school. His uncle, Ray Fox, Jr., was building engines for NASCAR teams and he took in his young nephew to have him learn the family secrets of engine building. (Fox's father, Ray, Sr., was the longtime engine builder for NASCAR legend Junior Johnson, and also built engines for NASCAR pioneer Fireball Roberts before becoming a NASCAR race car owner in the 60's.) Ray Fox, Jr. was the primary engine builder for car owner Robert Yates whose main driver at the time was Davey Allison. Young Devin Barbee was a jack man in the pits for Allison during races.
After Ray Fox, Jr's untimely passing in 1990, Devin Barbee went on to work for car owner Jack Roush as an engine tuner before going to work for the Hendrick Motorsports team in 1996, eventually becoming the primary engine builder for racers Terry Labonte and then Kyle Busch. But long hours and incessant travel made it tough on Barbee and his young family back in Concord.
Knowing that he needed a change and a new challenge in life, Barbee sat down with his sister to sort out what he may want to do. His sister said that people need to eat, so why not do something to do with food? When they were growing up, there was a grocery store in the Concord area - Dover's Supermarket - that had fresh cut meats, seafood and a reputation as being the best butcher department in the area. But there was no place like that any more in Concord and Barbee decided to open a butcher shop in the former Faggart's Hardware Store on Concord Parkway North. Renovating the space and putting in a butcher shop in one side of the building, Barbee opened The Stock Market in the spring of 2009. The other side of the building was left vacant because Barbee had a plan for that side at some point down the road.
About four years after Barbee opened The Stock Market, business was going very well when he was approached by Joey Graham, a barbecue aficionado who had worked in restaurants to pay his way through college and eventually managed a number of restaurants over the years. Graham had been to barbecue places in Kansas City and Memphis, as well as all across Texas and his native South Carolina to come up with his own style of barbecue. It turned out that Devin Barbee's plan in the back of his head was to open a restaurant in that space. In 2014, Barbee and Graham opened The Smoke Pit next door to The Stock Market. In early 2017, the two - along with partner Jeremy Beaver - opened a second Smoke Pit location in Salisbury, NC. And possibly by the time this post is published, the trio will have opened a third Smoke Pit in Monroe, NC.
We pulled into The Smoke Pit just before 6 p.m. (see map) It looked nice from the outside and there seemed to be a lot of cars in the parking lot. There was an outside dining patio, but no one was seated outside. Sharing a front door with The Stock Market, we went inside The Smoke Pit. I took a quick look into The Stock Market and decided that I'd like to go in there to look around after we finished dinner, but unfortunately the meat shop closed moments after we went into The Smoke Pit.
It's counter service at The Smoke Pit with a big menu board on the wall near the cash register. There was a sign that asked patrons to order first and then pick out a table. But we didn't have to worry about that as the restaurant was about 3/4's full and we were the second people in line. The Smoke Pit's menu was what I would call Texas-style barbecue with brisket, ribs (wet or dry), pulled pork, barbecued chicken, and burnt ends on the menu. Unfortunately - for me - there wasn't any beer available. I do like a cold beer with good barbecue, but I was not going to get that at The Smoke Pit.
The restaurant, itself, was nice and open, but the tables were a little close together. There were a number of colorful paintings of longhorn cattle, bison, horses and other livestock on the walls above the booths. After we ordered our food, we ended up getting a table in the center of the restaurant. As we waited for our food, the line to the front counter to order had grown to more than a dozen deep with people standing out in the joint entry way between the barbecue joint and the butcher shop. We realized that we had gotten there right before the rush and people were now waiting on tables to open up. The Smoke Pit was a very popular place.
My wife ended up getting the burnt ends - a healthy portion of burnt end parts of a beef brisket slathered in a sweet and smoky barbecue sauce. The burnt ends were thick cut and tender with a bit of a burnt bark to the outer side. She thought they were absolutely delicious, but there was way more than she could eat. I had to try a couple of them and I thought they were moist and flavorful - better than some burnt ends I've had in Kansas City, the home of good burnt end brisket.
For her sides she got a piece of corn bread and something they called "red" cole slaw. They had two different types of cole slaw for sides and the girl explained that the "white" cole slaw was just regular creamy cole slaw, while the red cole slaw was a vinegar base with a spicy taste to it. She liked the spicy cole slaw a lot and offered me a bite. It was very good.
I went with the brisket and pulled pork combo with a side of mac 'n cheese and some baked beans. Cut slices of Texas toast came on my platter that was served on butchers paper on a tray. They had three sauces on the table - the same sweet and smoky sauce they had on my wife's burnt ends, a sweet and smoky sauce that had a little spicy kick to it, and a Carolina-style peppery vinegar sauce that I have to say was not too bad on the pulled pork.
The portions they served at The Smoke Pit were huge. I had five or six thick strips of brisket that were all tender, most and full of a great barbecue flavor. The outer bark of the brisket gave the beef a nice smoky taste. The chopped pulled pork was also moist and smoky in flavor. Adding some of the spicier sauce with the beef was a nice palate pleaser, but you really didn't need any sauce for the brisket. And, as I said, adding some of the Carolina-style peppery vinegar sauce to the pork made the taste even more enjoyable.
My baked beans were all right - nothing great, but certainly not bad. I added some of the spicy sweet sauce to them to zip up the taste and it helped them out. The mac 'n cheese side was also just all right, but I would have liked to have gotten the red cole slaw instead of the mac 'n cheese.
We were about halfway through the meal when I remembered that we were going to have barbecue the next evening as part of the rehearsal dinner/family gathering that was taking place the night before the wedding. "Oh, well," my wife said. "If it's half as good as this barbecue, we'll be all right." (Side note - the catered barbecue we had the next night may not have been as half as good as the barbecue at The Smoke Pit.)
Our GPS search for a nearby barbecue joint didn't steer us wrong - The Smoke Pit was top notch. The brisket, pulled pork and burnt ends that we had were all fabulous. The best side of all that we tried was the spicy "red" cole slaw that had a vinegar taste. I enjoyed trying all three of the sauces they had on the table and I surprisingly liked the vinegar/pepper-based sauce on the pulled pork the best. About the only quibble I had was that they didn't sell beer to go along with the barbecue - a minor inconvenience, though, for a guy who likes a cold beer with his barbecue. Nonetheless, the barbecue at The Smoke Pit was very, very good and the portions were huge. I felt bad leaving some of the meat behind since we were traveling, but I'd put their barbecue up against many of the very good to excellent barbecue places I've been to in my travels.