<\/p>\n
Michael Sambrooks at the original The Pit Room in Montrose<\/p>\n
J.C. Reid\/Contributor<\/p>\n
Sausage, brisket, cornbread and beans at The Pit Room in Montrose<\/p>\n
J.C. Reid\/Contributor<\/p>\n
Preparing orders at The Pit Room in Montrose<\/p>\n
J.C. Reid\/Contributor<\/p>\n
The original trailer smoker at The Pit Room in Montrose<\/p>\n
J.C. Reid\/Contributor<\/p>\n
Michael Sambrooks slicing brisket at The Pit Room in\u00a0Montrose<\/p>\n
J.C. Reid\/Contributor<\/p>\n
Brisket on the chopping block<\/p>\n
J.C. Reid\/Contributor<\/p>\n
Sausage, brisket, cornbread and beans at The Pit Room in Montrose<\/p>\n
J.C. Reid\/Contributor<\/p>\n
In 2014, Michael Sambrooks was working as a manager at Goode Company Barbeque when he had an idea.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Ten years earlier, his dad, David, made him an offer: spend a decade in the restaurant business paying your dues, and he\u2019d consider investing in his son opening a restaurant of his own.\u00a0<\/p>\n
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.<\/p>\n
Article continues below this ad<\/p>\n
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\u2019s best and most beloved barbecue joints, getting it open wasn\u2019t easy.<\/p>\n
First, the all-important location inside the Loop. Michael wanted a spot in Montrose near the heart of the restaurant scene.\u00a0<\/p>\n
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 \u201cbookstore.\u201d Great, Sambrooks thought. He was from Kingwood and wasn\u2019t particularly familiar with Montrose at the time.<\/p>\n
But for anyone who lived in Montrose in the 2000s, that building was the infamous \u201cTalk of the Town III\u201d adult bookstore that closed after a fire in 2011.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Article continues below this ad<\/p>\n
Sambrooks, none the wiser, leased the property and began demolition.<\/p>\n
\u201cAs we started tearing out walls, we kept finding these coins everywhere,\u201d says Sambrooks, referring to the tokens used in old adult arcades. \u201cMy contractor finally told me what had been here before, so it all started to make sense.\u201d<\/p>\n
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.<\/p>\n
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.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Those pits are still in use.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Article continues below this ad<\/p>\n
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.<\/p>\n
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\u2019s 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.\u00a0<\/p>\n
The menu is also distinguished by one of the best Texas red-style chilis in the state, made from scratch using Sambrooks\u2019 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.<\/p>\n
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.<\/p>\n
Article continues below this ad<\/p>\n
The Pit Room\u00a0Montrose
1201 Richmond;\u00a0281-888-1929
Open daily for breakfast, lunch and dinner.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Michael Sambrooks at the original The Pit Room in Montrose J.C. Reid\/Contributor Sausage, brisket, cornbread and beans at…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":476201,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[56,58,57],"class_list":["post-476200","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-houston","tag-houston","tag-houston-headlines","tag-houston-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/476200","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=476200"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/476200\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/476201"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=476200"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=476200"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=476200"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}