Pig in a Pit, Macon GA (CLOSED)

This is Marie, contributing a little story about a barbecue place that Grant hasn’t visited. The review is for the Macon branch of the Pig In A Pit Bar-B-Que restaurant. Their branch in Milledgeville is the original one, and maybe we’ll make our way there eventually.

Grant and I recall different versions of how this came to be probably the only barbecue place that I have eaten at and he hasn’t. As he puts it, he just said that I should check out some places along the way to my folks’ place. He doesn’t seem to recall that he mentioned this place along with another as places he has not visited, and so I decided to check one of them out and report back. The other, whose name I don’t recall, looked like it was too far down a side road and wasn’t under consideration. So far I’ve visited twice or three times, and he hasn’t yet. It’s easy to miss, though there is a sign on the highway “what’s to eat at this exit” but even that is partially obscured with a branch or something. In any case, the visit before last to my folks’ place, I had meant to show the place to Julian so he could brag about eating at a BBQ place where his Dad has never been as well, and completely missed the exit. We wound up stopping at a fast food place to keep his stomach from gnawing on the poor boy’s backbone, and what a poor second that made, I can tell you!

This place has some mixed reviews. The best ones seem to be for their ribs, which I haven’t tried but did see on an awful lot of the other diners’ plates. I have experienced a little variation in my own very limited experience with them, and the best I can say is that the one or possibly two visits I made on Saturdays were better than the last visit, on Sunday. My recollection of the Saturday visit was of a packed place with really juicy, thick sandwiches and a brownie for dessert (bought separately) that had me fighting my inner gourmand to keep from getting seconds.

On this last visit there were only two other tables full, and the meat was a little more dry than last time, but it had a little more smoky flavor to it. On the other hand, the server had the food out to me before I finished filling my cup of tea! It was excellent tea, and I was quite pained when I reached for it in the car and realized it had been forgotten.

There are four kinds of sauce: a thick, sweet variety, a hot version of the thick sauce, a mustard-base, and some Carolina-style vinegar. It’s best if you mix a little of the vinegar sauce into the sweet kind, and that’s despite the fact that I am the Memphis fan of the household (Grant prefers Carolina style).

The restaurant is in a fairly characterless part of town, and the location is in a tiny strip mall that (in my limited experience) has other shops that don’t appear to ever be open. I’ve seen people inside the beef jerky and sausage store next door even though it was closed at the time, and one of the other reviewers says that place is great to visit after your meal, but maybe the weekend hours are different. After all, there’s not much chance of a weekday visit on my part. However, the inside is clean and the benches and booths are comfortable.

There is the usual sort of country decor (someone went a little too country with the wooden pig cut-outs) and the bathrooms are wallpapered with old magazine pages that contain perfectly ridiculous advertisements. I would need to have a few more of the sides and maybe a couple more visits to be sure that the apparent slight unevenness in consistency isn’t a habit for them, but so far it certainly wouldn’t be a hardship. Especially if the brownies are consistent.

(Update, 9/19/11: I (Grant) learned today that Pig in a Pit was closed by the Department of Revenue back in February for unpaid taxed. I never did get to try it. Darn!)

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