Crab cakes and Old Bay seasoning have always loomed large in the Maryland food scene. However, when celebrity chef Guy Fieri visited a roadside dive called Chaps in 2008 for his Food Network show “Diners, Drive-ins, and Dives,” Baltimore pit beef was thrust into the limelight.
Before the episode aired, few outside the mid-Atlantic region had even heard of pit beef barbecue; furthermore, not many Marylanders know the true story of this favorite local crowd-pleaser’s origins. The stories surrounding it are as hazy as the smoke from the burning charcoal the meats are cooked on.
A Murky Past
Local lore has it that before it was called a “pit beef sandwich,” it was simply a roast beef sandwich served at Baltimore and Eastern Shore church functions and political fundraisers called bull and oyster roasts. A 1966 edition of The Evening Sun reported that a John F. Langenfelder, whose roots are German, was a caterer for a local hotel that had a bull roast for $4.75 per person. At such events, a huge chunk of beef is roasted over an open pit, sliced up, and served.Langenfelder’s catering business also took him to Memorial Stadium, where the Baltimore Orioles played at the time. There, first baseman Boog Powell, who was practicing catching fly balls in the outfield, caught a whiff of the smoky scent, leading him to Langenfelder, who was busy cooking for some Orioles fans at a picnic area. Mr. Powell, securing a slice, recalled in his memoir, “It was marvelous stuff.” Decades later in 1992, Mr. Powell, who had retired from professional baseball by then, opened his own barbecue shack serving pit beef sandwiches at the Orioles’ new nest at Camden Yards.
Langenfelder isn’t the only one connected to early pit beef stories.
The Baltimore Sun attributes an early reference to the sandwich from a 1968 ad for Al Kelz’s Elite Tavern with pit beef on the menu. That tavern is long gone but the legend of the sandwich lives on.
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Oral accounts pinpoint a stretch of the Pulaski Highway (Route 40)—the part that stretches from eastern Baltimore all the way to Wilmington, Delaware—as host to a handful of roadside stands and trailers serving up grilled meat over open pits in a mostly working-class neighborhood of Baltimore in the 1970s and 1980s. Most of these places have also closed shop or moved to other locations.
With all these anecdotes and limited documentation of its origins, it cannot be definitively confirmed to whom, where, and when the creation of the pit beef could be attributed.
A Maryland Thing
Obscure origins aside, the pit beef sandwich is recognized as a “Maryland thing.” Indie pop culture featured the Baltimore pit beef in the John Waters 1998 film “Pecker.” The protagonist’s grandmother operates a sandwich stand in front of their charming yellow home with the words “pit beef” painted on it.In the hit TV show “The Wire,” which came out in 2002, the pit beef sandwich was also featured in a few episodes, with location shooting at the same Chaps Pit Beef Guy Fieri visited six years later.
Though Chaps may have put pit beef on the American food map, it’s hardly the only place to get good pit beef. Chances are, as you drive into Baltimore and around the Eastern Shore, “where there’s smoke,” there’s probably a pit beef stand somewhere in the vicinity.
In the small town of Hampstead, 24 miles northwest of Baltimore, former U.S. Coast Guard and retired law enforcement officer Steve Rogers has opened his own pit beef shack called Outlaw. From doing the rounds of various barbecue circuits to bottling and selling his own barbecue sauces and rubs to finally opening his own brick-and-mortar Main Street establishment, Mr. Rogers follows the family tradition of being in the restaurant business. His establishment draws locals in for a good meat sandwich—a 6-ounce serving of smoky meat on a potato roll, enhanced by his sauce concoctions and the signature horseradish that his wife Leah claims “will clean your sinuses out.” One bite gives you all the smoke and flavors of “Bawlmer” barbecue.
Calling Hampstead home, Mr. Rogers gives back to the community, supporting local schools, sports groups, and the police and fire departments. He’s been featured by The Baltimore Sun and interviewed by a local Fox News network for grilling tips and tricks.
The Deconstruction of a Sandwich
In a scene from “The Wire,” Wee-Bey Brice is asked how he wants his pit beef sandwich. He says succinctly, “Medium rare and a lot of horseradish.” Sounds very simple, and unlike the slow-cooked style of the Texas barbecue, the Baltimore style takes less time for the meat to be ready to eat.A big hunk of seasoned meat—Mr. Rogers prefers bottom round because he likes “the direction that the muscle runs”—is placed on a grill and the gristle that is starting to render is sliced off. It continues to cook over a hot bed of charcoal for another hour or so, with some pit beef places opting to also add hardwood for a distinct smoky flavor, until it has a char or crust on the outside. This crust provides the texture and charcoal flavor around the edges of the thinly sliced meat. A handful is piled onto a potato roll, topped with raw onions (if you choose) and a light spread of horseradish sauce to complete the sandwich. Prepared horseradish goes well with prime rib and roast beef sandwiches, and it’s no surprise that it’s the condiment of choice for the pit beef sandwich.
Pit cooking isn’t exclusive to Maryland, but as a southern state, it is certainly no stranger to it. In a Southern Living article, barbecue editor Robert F. Moss states: “By the time of the Civil War, Southerners had been cooking barbecue for more than two centuries, and a great many of these were African-American slaves, who tended the pits at barbecues.”
Maryland food chronicler Kara Mae Harris describes the pit beef as a “local interpretation of southern black barbecue traditions intersected with the Jewish deli traditions in Baltimore.”
The use of horseradish, deli-sliced cuts of meat, and the Kaiser rolls or rye bread hark back to the thousands of Jewish Germans who settled in the Baltimore area in the 1800s. While some pit beef stands use Kaiser rolls, potato rolls (also used at Chaps and Outlaw) seem to be the bread of choice for holding 6 ounces of sliced meat and its juices.
As You Like It
Bob Creager, owner of Chaps, insists that there are no hard and fast rules for what goes in a pit beef sandwich.“It used to be that the purists used horseradish and onions 50 years ago,“ he said. ”Everybody’s different. Some people like mustard, some people like barbecue [sauce], some people put half a gallon of mayo on top. There is no right or wrong. It’s all what you like.”
Mr. Rogers seconds the motion.
“We let our customers do whatever they want to do. We don’t dress anything for them. They do everything for themselves,” he said. With a wide range of in-house sauces perfected from years of barbecue competitions, trying the meat with the different sauces is an adventure in itself.
There’s no denying that part of the pit beef experience is enhanced by the soundtrack of whooshing cars speeding down the highway or the soft rumble of the parade of cars driving through small-town America. But whether it’s on Pulaski Highway or on Main Street, pit beef has a way of bringing people together. From the bull roasts of yore to a gathering of sports fans, there’s always room for another seat at the table.
Chaps is now housed in a new air-conditioned site across from their former 12-foot-by-15-foot shack, where they can seat more customers. Outlaw draws locals out for a hearty meal and good conversations on their adjacent patio, shaded by soda-sponsored umbrellas—even at 2:30 in the afternoon. It’s a scene replicated in other pit beef joints all over Baltimore City, neighboring counties, and parts of the Eastern Shore—a food tradition Marylanders can truly be proud of.
