Baltimore’s Highway of Pit Beef and Asphalt Smoke

A lot of cities are famous for their street food — crema-lathered elote on Avenida Michoacán, dirty-water dogs from a cart sitting at Broadway and 42nd, crispy arancini peddled by fruit vendors through the narrow alleyways of Palermo. But only Baltimore is known for its highway food.

The Pulaski Highway, to be exact. Since the early 1970s, this 35-mile stretch from “East Bawlmor” to Abingdon has been Maryland’s open-air food court — a smoky corridor of roadside shacks carving up Pit Beef sandwiches. Thinly shaved roast beef, seared over charcoal embers until blackened at the edges and blush-pink within, piled high on a Kaiser roll, buried under raw onions, and baptized with tiger sauce — a sharp, creamy blessing of horseradish and mayo. Eaten in your car or at a wooden picnic table beneath the mingling perfume of barbecue smoke and exhaust fumes, it’s Baltimore’s turf in a town defined by Chesapeake surf.

This Ain’t Arby’s

While not as diverse as America’s many regional hot dog styles, a handful of roast beef sandwiches across the country have earned their own foodigenous status. Pit Beef doesn’t drip red like a North Shore three-way slathered in James River sauce and cheese. It doesn’t carry the salty caraway crust of Buffalo’s Beef on Weck, and there’s no ceremonious double-dipping in au jus like its Brooklyn or Los Angeles cousins. Pit Beef skips the pomp and circumstance — no melted mutz, no crazy acronyms, no curly fries on the side (though Arby’s fries rock). Just beef, fire, asphalt — and onion. Lots of onion.

Pulaski Highway- Pit Beef Alley

Courtesy of Baltimore Sun

The story of Pit Beef isn’t written in a cookbook — it’s etched into the shoulders of Pulaski Highway, in those slivers of land wedged between gas stations and “nightclub” parking lots. Since the 1970s, drivers have been pulling over for foil-wrapped beef sandwiches from a rotating crop of seasonal pop-up trailers. Along U.S. 40, spots like Jackie’s Bar Harbor Inn and Bobby Thibou’s added pit beef to their weekend menus, giving Baltimore’s working class a new ritual between shifts and stoplights.

But it was Chaps Pit Beef — a 12-by-15-foot shack that started slinging sandwiches in 1987 — that became the city’s smoky standard-bearer. The plywood hut eventually gave way to a modern brick-and-mortar restaurant, and the menu grew to include corned beef, turkey, sausage, and every imaginable combo of the three — Charm City’s non-barbecue barbecue.

Then there’s Charcoal Style, a stand in White Marsh owned by Nik Courtalis, who, like me, entered the culinary world as a busboy at fourteen. Nik took over Charcoal Style at twenty-one and has carried the torch ever since, serving pit ham every bit as good as the beef — with a bbq sauce that bites back just a little harder.

Plug Into the GPS

Though seafood rightfully dominates Maryland’s culinary landscape, Pit Beef remains a cherished exception — a smoky, blue-collar classic enjoyed throughout the state. Neighborhood favorite Gene’s Bar in Forest Hill, with the homey feel of a VFW, serves a mouth-watering Pit Beef, Ham, and Turkey on your choice of bread. Another local landmark, Pioneer Pit Beef in Catonsville, has preserved the old-shack aesthetic with its picnic-table dining room al fresco — proof that the best meals still come from the shoulder of the highway.

Pit Beef isn’t Maryland’s claim to fame — it’s her quiet, smoldering secret.