Chesapeake blue crabs steamed and tossed in Old Bay. Berger Cookies - shortbread cookies veiled with a layer of fudge.
And then there’s beef.
(Did she just say beef?)
Yes. Pit beef, actually.
A top round roast cooked on charcoal grills, deli sliced paper thin, nestled within a pillowy kaiser roll, smeared with horseradish sauce and topped with raw white onions. Pit beef.
Most Southern States on the Eastern Seaboard (also referred to as the Barbecue Belt) have their own unique regional styles of barbecue, and Maryland is no exception. Baltimore pit beef is one of the most widely known forms of Maryland barbecue. Pit beef is a lightly seasoned and slightly smokey grilled beef usually served rare. Unlike other types of barbecue you may have encountered, pit beef isn’t smoked or cooked in an actual pit, an oven, or over direct flames. And it isn’t flavored by smoking different hardwoods like hickory or cherrywood. Nor is it coated in a pungent dry rub or drenched in barbecue sauce. It’s purely good beef cooked on charcoals and served rare, like all good beef should.
About 5 miles southwest of Homewood Campus stands Chap’s Pit Beef. Chap’s Pit Beef is a local landmark and Baltimore’s most famous pit beef restaurant. It was built in 1987 as a 12x15 shack serving only beef, ham, and sausage. Its expansion over the last 27 years includes an indoor and outdoor dining room and a menu to satisfy its growing fan base. You can get a pit beef sandwich for $6.75 cooked to your liking, combo sandwiches and subs, wings, ribs, and sides like generously cheesy cheese fries. They have a plethora of toppings and sauces available such as onions, pickles, house bbq sauce, and tiger sauce, a mayonnaise based horseradish mixture. Chap’s Pit Beef has been featured on the Food Network, Travel Channel, and has been in The City Paper’s “Baltimore’s Best” for 22 years.
So during those off-season months when you can’t get crab and you’ve had your fill of overpriced sandwiches at CharMar, bum a ride to Chap’s Pit Beef. Take a bite of that pit beef sandwich and feel the insides of your nostrils tingle from the horseradish, your teeth dig into the crisp raw onions and the juicy rare center of beef, then sink into the soft roll that seems to lay the final blanket over your intoxicated tastebuds.
That is pit beef, my friends.
