1 Newburgh Street, London W1. No bookings. Meal for two, including wine and service, £30-50
Economic chill winds can gift us many things. It's boom time for food banks, suicides are on the up, and anybody with a taste for nostalgia can say hello again to rickets and scurvy. Curiously, though, there are also a few more benign, happy side effects, of which the Pitt Cue Co is a perfect example. When money is tight and the banks are too busy giving their bosses bonuses to lend cash to start up businesses, people have to get smart. In the old days a young chef with ambitions to write their own menu would have raised £1.5m to launch something gilded and marbled and sconced. Now they are far more likely to buy a knackered burger van and just get cooking.
Which is exactly how the Pitt Cue Co started last summer. Tom Adams – who had experience at the Blueprint Café and the Ledbury – and his friend Jamie Berger decided to bring their version of American BBQ to London's street food scene by parking up under Hungerford Bridge. I wasn't a huge fan. They talked the talk on Twitter, bigged up the specials of ribs or wings, but by the time I got there they were down to little more than pulled pork and coleslaw. Very nice pulled pork, but not what I was hoping for.
Then the Pitt Cue Co set up in bricks and mortar just back from London's Carnaby Street. Even allowing for my fetish for all things pig, this new incarnation really is very good indeed. They have focused on doing three or four things, and they are doing them very well. The food is even just about good enough to justify putting up with the increasingly common, endlessly infuriating no-reservations policy. I do so hate queuing.
Upstairs is a tiny bar where you can eat bowls of their own pork scratchings and slug bourbon-heavy cocktails or self-consciously anti-hip beers like Pabst Blue Ribbon. You can get takeaways here or even eat crammed into the counter in the window.
Downstairs is the tiny dining room, which seats two dozen. It's so small that when a waiter accidentally leaned on the light switch the whole place went dark. Prepare to be intimate with your neighbour. Then again this isn't a place for polite behaviour. It's messy, nine-napkin food, served in prison-style white-enamelled, blue-edged tin trays. It's that Shawshank Redemption vibe. Kinda.
Both the sticky pork St Louis ribs and the dark-crusted beef ribs were, like me, thick and meaty; unlike me they had a serious blush of pink all the way to the bone, a sign of just how long they had been in the smoker. There's well-sauced pulled pork or beef brisket, all served with crunchy house pickles and one side, which includes braised sprout tops, mash flavoured with burnt ends and various hearty salads.
Of the sides we tried, only the baked beans, with their claggy, refried texture, failed to please. Mains are around £9, though you can add a half-serving of a second meat for £5. There's also a generous pot of smoked hot wings with pickled celery for £4. The team from Gordon Ramsay's Bread Street Kitchen, where they charge twice the price for so very much less, might like to come and take lessons.
And that's about it, apart from dessert, which they change most days. When we were there it was a rhubarb Eton mess with peanut butter meringues, and a light sticky toffee pudding with a salted caramel bourbon sauce. Which of those last four words could you not love?
Unlike John Hargate's marvellous BBQ Shack down in Brighton there is nothing grungy about the Pitt Cue Co. This is an urban British hipster's take on a solid bit of Americana, tucked away on a tidy London street. But it's executed with commitment, wit and serious attention to detail. And a lot of pig. It should do very well indeed.
Email Jay at jay.rayner@observer.co.uk or visit theguardian.com/profile/jayrayner for all his reviews in one place
