Ten years after it opened in a gutted former adult bookstore on Richmond Avenue, The Pit Room is still running the same two 500-gallon offset smokers that fired up its first briskets. The Montrose barbecue joint celebrated its 10-year anniversary with the pits — custom-built by a welder in Stafford — still doing the work that made the restaurant Houston's name in craft barbecue.
From a Burned-Out Bookstore to a Barbecue Pit
The building at 1201 Richmond had a rough history before it ever smelled like smoked meat. The space had formerly housed the Talk of the Town III adult bookstore, which closed after a fire in 2011. According to the Houston Chronicle, Michael Sambrooks leased the dilapidated building and rebuilt most of its structure himself, including the enclosed pit room that gave the restaurant its name.
Before any of that, Sambrooks was working as a manager at Goode Company Barbeque in 2014 when he pitched the idea of a scratch-made craft barbecue restaurant inside the Loop — one open seven days a week that would never run out of food. His father, David Sambrooks, who had spent a decade in the restaurant business himself, offered to consider investing in his son's concept, according to the same Chronicle account.
The Same Two Smokers, Ten Years Later
Once the lease was signed, Sambrooks commissioned a Stafford welder to build two offset barrel smokers, each holding 500 gallons — the same pits that remain in use today. Those smokers were steel offsets made by Allout Fabrications, according to a 2016 review from Texas Monthly, which described the then-new restaurant's pair of oak-fueled, offset smokers running around the clock.
That early review also captured the kitchen transition happening at the time: Bramwell Tripp had taken over as pitmaster after Sambrooks parted ways with his first pitmaster, John Avila, late the previous year. Around a month after opening, Texas Monthly called The Pit Room one of the most promising barbecue joints in Houston. In a separate account published the same month, the Chronicle quoted the restaurant's team describing a commitment to craft: “Our pits run 24 hours a day,” and noted that sausage-making was “a three-day process” of butchering, grinding, stuffing and smoking in-house.
A Tex-Mex Spin on Brisket and Tacos
Sambrooks and Tripp developed what became a Tex-Mex-influenced craft barbecue menu, built around brisket-fat tortillas served alongside brisket, pork ribs and sausage. The tacos became a signature: a chopped brisket version with cheddar cheese and salsa roja, a pulled pork taco finished with salsa verde and cotija cheese, and a shredded chicken taco topped with charred garlic and melted cheese. The restaurant's chili, meanwhile, is built from a Sambrooks family recipe using at least 25 ingredients.
That in-house approach extends well beyond the tortillas. The restaurant's early menu featured three types of handmade sausage — Czech-style beef, a pork version with jalapeños and cheese, and venison — all made through the same three-day curing and smoking process described by the Chronicle in 2016. Texas Monthly's review summed up the kitchen's philosophy plainly: “We make everything except the bread and the ice cream.”
Part of a Bigger Houston Barbecue Story
The Pit Room's decade in business tracks with a broader stretch of growth for Houston's craft barbecue scene. Houston Chronicle columnist J.C. Reid, who began blogging about food and barbecue for the paper in 2010, founded the Houston Barbecue Project in 2011 to document barbecue restaurants across the area, according to the Houston Chronicle's history of the local scene. Reid and others went on to found the Houston Barbecue Festival, and the event's 2014 edition drew 2,000 guests sampling meats from 20 restaurants.
By 2019, the same Chronicle reporting noted that Houston's craft barbecue world had entered expansion mode, with established restaurants opening additional locations rather than new names cropping up alone. The Pit Room's own footprint grew in step: its official site lists locations at 1201 Richmond Avenue, 1205 Richmond Avenue and 10301 Katy Freeway, according to The Pit Room's about page, which also credits Michael Sambrooks as the founder and co-owner alongside members of his family.
The restaurant sources USDA Prime beef and heritage Berkshire-Duroc pork, and it sticks to an unsauced, black-pepper-and-smoke approach unless a customer asks otherwise, per the restaurant's own site. The Pit Room is open daily for breakfast, lunch and dinner at 1201 Richmond, and can be reached at 281-888-1929.
