Shigs in Pit BBQ & Brew
6250 Maplecrest RoadWe were packing up the car after a day at the Fort Wayne Children’s Zoo and J looks at me and says, “You’ve already picked out a place to eat, haven’t you?” Well, duh, I don’t travel without finding someplace to eat.
My first instinct is to find a brewery. I found a couple in Fort Wayne, but breweries with food were in pretty limited supply. I found one with a few locations around town but then I stumbled on another place affiliated with that brewery that I knew would be a hit with everyone.
Shigs in Pit (get it? It’s a play on Pigs in Shit) is on Maplecrest Road about a mile and a half south of I-469 on the northeast side of Fort Wayne. This is the second restaurant for a BBQ team that has won competitions all over the country, but only this one serves Mad Anthony beers. This location just opened a few months ago in a new construction building.
The restaurant is divided in to four distinct areas. The first area is the order counter near the entrance. There are separate order lines for dine-in and carry-out. The menus are hanging on the wall behind the cash registers as well as sitting on the counter. You put your order in here then take a number to a table in the dining room and your food is brought out to you.
The dining room is a mixture of booths and tables. The dark colors and dim lighting prominent in the order area is carried through the dining room as is the wood facade on surfaces. There are a couple TV’s that were turned to college football but they were easy to ignore if you just wanted to enjoy family time. We stopped in around 2:30 on a Saturday and there were a few others dining in, but we were in between the lunch and dinner rushes.
The third space is the bar. This area is separated from the dining room by a metal railing. There are signs proclaiming this a 21+ area only. In addition to the bar filled with TV’s Mad Anthony beer and mugs from the Mug Club, there are a number of tables for couples or small groups hanging out that don’t want to have kids running around at their feet.
The last space is a patio out behind the bar. I didn’t look out there, but I saw several people taking their mugs and heading out back to enjoy the afternoon.
We got our food ordered and the kids sitting down then I headed over to the bar. The only beer on tap is from Mad Anthony. One of the owners of Shigs in Pit also owns the Mad Anthony restaurants so they put the Mad Brew in this location as well as Mad Anthony’s four restaurants.
I noticed a couple of flight options. There was a build your own kind of deal which I would normally do, but I could see our food was coming out so I did the House Flight in which the beers are already set instead.
This flight of six beers is pretty basic. It’s mostly their always on beers and then a seasonal at the end.
The first beer I picked up was the Olde Fort Lager. They call it an American Style Golden Lager. It was pretty easy to drink, crisp, and had a muted flavor to it. I’m not a lager guy so I wouldn’t order this one on my own, but it was a good start to the flight.
The second beer was the Auburn Lager. This one is described as an American Style Amber lager. Again, crisp and easily drinkable, but not my cup of tea. I wouldn’t throw it out, but I just haven’t acquired the palate for the subtleness of the lagers.
Beer number three was Six to Midnight. This is their session IPA that’s also available in cans. It’s ran about the middle of the road for me. Good flavor and not a lot of hoppiness. The use of Citra hops bumped this one a little bit higher for me.
The fourth beer was Ruby Raspberry Wheat. This is a wheat ale made with Oregon raspberries. It actually had a good sweet taste to it without to much of a bitterness. As far as fruit beers go, I liked this one a lot.
Beer number five was Harry Baals. Yeah, I spelled that right but it’s pronounced the way you think it is. This is an Irish Stout poured from a nitrogen tap. It’s a nice, smooth stout. Nothing jumps out as far as flavor, but easily drinkable.
The final beer was the seasonal selection. It’s that time of year when the Oktoberfest beers start coming out. I know Oktoberfests are another type of lager but I’ve come to enjoy these over the years. In my mind, “Oktoberfest” always meant pumpkin. Not sure where that line of thinking came from, but I was wrong and avoided the beers for a totally stupid and wrong reason. Once I finally did try one, I actually enjoyed it and will typically order an Oktoberfest if I see it on tap. This one was really crisp and delicious.
I was really excited for the BBQ at Shigs in Pit because the owners are actually champion BBQ competitors. The restaurant came after years of competing.
I stuck with what I’ve been getting at BBQ restaurants lately. The Sliced Beef Brisket sandwich…although the Brisket Burnt Ends sandwich was really tempting.
The brisket was tender, juicy, brisket sliced pretty thinly and served on a white hoagie roll. The choice of bread was super disappointing. It tasted like a cheap backyard barbecue. The brisket was soooo good. It was super tender and just fell apart when it was touched. There was a solid beefy flavor which was heavily seasoned with salt and pepper. It’s one of those briskets that doesn’t need sauce. I wish I would have went for the dinner instead of the sandwich. The bread choice was just…odd.
The sandwich was served alongside a handful of fresh cut, golden brown, slightly greasy french fries. The fries are cooked the way I love seeing them cooked. They’re slightly crispy but still a little limp and just a little bit greasy which holds the salt on to them. For the most part, I ate them without any sauce, but I did use them to try out each of the three sauces that were on the table. There was both a classic and a hot BBQ sauce and both of them were pretty spicy. The Carolina sauce was good but not conducive to dipping french fries.
J ordered the pulled pork meal so she could get two sides. The pile of tender pork was surrounded by fries and a paper boat filled with Apple Pie Baked Beans. I was a little surprised at first because J always orders the sandwich but she really wanted two sides. The pork was super tender with a great bark that was still pretty crunchy. J’s a sauce person and prefers a Memphis-style sweet sauce. She grabbed the original, but it was almost too spicy for her. She powered through because the meat was so good and the initial flavor of the sauce was good…it just really kicked your taste buds at the end.
The fries she got as a side were the same as mine and she got a piece of garlic bread to go along with the meal. The second side she chose was the Apple Pie Baked Beans. This large serving of beans had the spices commonly used in apple pie mixed into them. J really liked the beans and finished the whole thing off. She offered up some of her pork to me so she’d have more room for the beans.
There’s a “Shiglets” menu for the kids that has a regular Mac ‘N Cheese (the sides menu is a Green Chile Mac ‘n Cheese) so we got them one to split. The Mac ‘n Cheese is served in a Styrofoam cup and it appears to just be a Kraft Mac ‘n Cheese. The kids prefer that when we eat out so they were happy. Between the two of them they ate close to the whole serving as well as some fries
We didn’t notice this at first but as someone came around to bus our table, he handed back the plate that the kids meal came on after he took the garbage off it. We were confused at first until he turned it over and realized it was a Frisbee for the kids to keep.
There’s a big case of sweets next to the order counter that L noticed on the way in. J said if she ate her meal she could get something so the two of them went back to pick up a brownie to finish off the meal. The brownie they came back with was big enough for three of us to eat. It was a dense, rich brownie with chocolate frosting and sprinkles on top.
The meal set us back a little under $45 with the beer and the dessert. Shigs in Pit BBQ is delicious. I’m still miffed by the choice of bread for the sandwich but all the BBQ was pretty incredible. I love the space that combines two of my favorite things…BBQ and beer. We were looking for a quick, delicious place to stop and eat after a trip to the zoo and we found that with Shigs in Pit BBQ & Brew.
SW Michigan Dining 