The BBQ Pit — Restaurant in Highland Park

Found this place while visiting from Ohio. To be honest bbq wasn’t on the menu idea for my family for the evening. By the time we got to order dinner a lot of places closed and this place was open so I checked out the menu. Bbq and Greek is something I’ve ever seen before and I was here for it! First when I couldn’t find it the man on the phone who appeared to be the owner or manager made sure I got right to the parking lot. We chatted like old pals waiting for my food. The gentlemen was welcoming and the vibe of the place had a very neighborhood feeling. He came off to me as the type of person who knew his customers names. Food was on time and on point. We got two different burgers which were grilled perfect, perfect toppings, enough to fill you up but you could eat it with two hands. My wife got the bbq meatloaf sandwich and it was fantastic. He appeared to have used his house bbq sauce which was a perfect blend of sweet and tang. Complimented the crust of the meatloaf extremely well. Finally the gyro platter. I believe it was $22.99? Easily 3 full stuffed gyros. The meat was perfectly moist which seems to be sometimes uncommon. Robust Greek flavor, and overall quantity left nothing to be desired here. If we’re here again next year I’ll be back. The Greek fries left me curious and quite a few menu items struck my eye. In 2024 a quality restaurant experience deserves to be made known and you sir are providing just that....

This has become one of my favorite local restaurants due to doing what they do extremely well and being genuinely nice people who are invested in the community.

To give an indication of how I hold The BBQ Pit up as special, I've told the family I want my birthday dinner from here each year since we moved to HP. With young kids, we've been getting carryout, but I'd love to dine in at some point.

They offer a special carryout package with an enormous about of food for under $80. The cost has risen for the special in the past couple of years, which is explained by the owner on their online menu. You can sense the disappointment in the way he apologizes and explains that his costs have risen.

Following the tragic July 4 mass shooting in HP, The BBQ Pit hosted an open house of sorts, welcoming the community to come in and heal together. How amazing is that? I can't think of another business that did such a thing during what was a really difficult time for our town.

All of this and I haven't yet mentioned the food. The ribs are fantastic - tender but not falling off the bone. They're always perfectly cooked and the sauce is outstanding. The ribs don't have a heavy smoke taste/smell; sometimes that can overwhelm the flavor of the meat. On our most recent visit, we also got their fried shrimp, and they were outstanding!

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Overall, it was pretty good. Their fries are definitely the best to-go fries we’ve had since COVID. My husband got gyros and a Greek salad. He thought they were both pretty good and would order them again.

I got the pulled pork sandwich and I will say they definitely didn’t skimp on pork or fries. The sandwich was kind of overwhelmed with pulled pork. Normally, that would be great because you could pull some off and eat for leftovers. But, this pork was very, very smoky tasting. I’m not sure if they used more smoke or liquid smoke than they normally do, but it was a very smoky product. I probably wouldn’t order the pulled pork again if it’s consistently that smoky. My husband tried it and agreed. Definitely disappointed because overall it seems like a solid place, but the smokiness of the pulled pork just was too...