Michael Sambrooks at the original The Pit Room in Montrose
J.C. Reid/Contributor
Sausage, brisket, cornbread and beans at The Pit Room in Montrose
J.C. Reid/Contributor
Preparing orders at The Pit Room in Montrose
J.C. Reid/Contributor
The original trailer smoker at The Pit Room in Montrose
J.C. Reid/Contributor
Michael Sambrooks slicing brisket at The Pit Room in Montrose
J.C. Reid/Contributor
Brisket on the chopping block
J.C. Reid/Contributor
Sausage, brisket, cornbread and beans at The Pit Room in Montrose
J.C. Reid/Contributor
In 2014, Michael Sambrooks was working as a manager at Goode Company Barbeque when he had an idea.
Ten years earlier, his dad, David, made him an offer: spend a decade in the restaurant business paying your dues, and he’d consider investing in his son opening a restaurant of his own.
That decade was up. Michael pitched an idea: to open the first craft barbecue restaurant inside the Loop that made everything from scratch, stayed open seven days a week and never ran out of food.
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The concept for The Pit Room was born. This past August, the restaurant celebrated its 10-year anniversary. And although the Sambrooks family created one of the city’s best and most beloved barbecue joints, getting it open wasn’t easy.
First, the all-important location inside the Loop. Michael wanted a spot in Montrose near the heart of the restaurant scene.
Understandably, most of the existing restaurant spaces were too expensive. While driving down Richmond, he spotted a dilapidated building. He called the owner, who told him it had previously been a “bookstore.” Great, Sambrooks thought. He was from Kingwood and wasn’t particularly familiar with Montrose at the time.
But for anyone who lived in Montrose in the 2000s, that building was the infamous “Talk of the Town III” adult bookstore that closed after a fire in 2011.
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Sambrooks, none the wiser, leased the property and began demolition.
“As we started tearing out walls, we kept finding these coins everywhere,” says Sambrooks, referring to the tokens used in old adult arcades. “My contractor finally told me what had been here before, so it all started to make sense.”
The previous fire meant Sambrooks had to rebuild most of the structure, including the enclosed pit room. Though most barbecue joints in Houston used rotisserie pits at the time, Sambrooks was committed to using offset barrel smokers, the standard for craft barbecue.
He approached several local pit makers to build them, but they were too expensive for his shoestring budget. So, he found a welder in Stafford to make two 500-gallon versions from a hand-drawn sketch he made with help from plans he found online.
Those pits are still in use.
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Next came the menu. Sambrooks wanted to do something beyond just Austin- and Central Texas-style barbecue offerings. He wanted a menu more attuned to the diversity of cuisines in Houston. So, he and his executive chef at the time, Bramwell Tripp, developed a Tex-Mex-influenced craft barbecue menu, one of the first of its kind in Texas.
From the beginning, a trio of tacos served on tortillas made with brisket fat supplemented the traditional Texas trinity of brisket, pork ribs, and sausage. There’s a chopped brisket taco with cheddar cheese and salsa roja, a pulled pork option with salsa verde and cotija cheese, and a shredded chicken version with charred garlic and melted cheese.
The menu is also distinguished by one of the best Texas red-style chilis in the state, made from scratch using Sambrooks’ family recipe with no less than twenty-five ingredients. You can get it served on a classic Frito pie, which will bring back memories for any Texan raised on that dish at Little League baseball games.
Ten years after opening, The Pit Room is still going strong by embracing that very Texan desire for great smoked meats as well as nostalgia for what makes the Texas barbecue experience unique.
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The Pit Room Montrose
1201 Richmond; 281-888-1929
Open daily for breakfast, lunch and dinner.