PittCue

When Tom Adams and Jamie Berger launched Pitt Cue in 2011, the pitch was direct: great meat, smoked or grilled, served alongside American whiskey and craft beer. The original Soho site ran at roughly 30 covers with no reservations and queues that stretched down the street, which tells you more about the cooking than any press release could. That early cult following eventually translated into a move to Devonshire Square in the City, where the format expanded to around 100 covers and added outdoor seating without losing the meat-forward focus that made the first site worth queuing for. The menu at the Devonshire Square restaurant was never static. Pulled pork, beef brisket, and pork ribs formed the backbone, but the kitchen pushed further: smoked neck of Mangalista pork drew particular attention from critics as the dish that separated Pitt Cue from the wave of mid-2010s barbecue openings that followed in its wake. Sausages, steak, and lamb rotated through depending on what the kitchen was working with, and the approach throughout was closer to a British sensibility around curing, brining, and smoking than to any single American regional tradition. Pricing at the Devonshire Square site sat at roughly £55 per head on average, with mains running from around £11.50 to £18.50 and larger shared plates averaging £36. That placed it at the higher end of the London barbecue bracket, though the quality of sourcing, particularly the Mangalista pork, gave the numbers context. Later coverage described Pitt Cue as a seminal London barbecue restaurant that had reached cult status, a distinction earned over more than a decade of operation rather than awarded by a single publication.