Pitmaster Back Alley

Place is definitely hard to find, but you admittedly feel rewarded when you do find it. Staff is friendly and gave extra bbq sauce when asked. Got the Carolina Pulled pork shoulder sandwich and burnt ends. The sandwich was tasty and was a slightly expensive to reasonable value for $13.49. I particularly love bbq so I have a hard time judging value sometimes. The burnt ends were delicious and took me off guard with how juicy they were. Highly recommend getting the beef burnt ends if you come here. I wish I could give this place between 4-5 stars instead of 4.

Very good barbecue (with one caveat— see below): meaty, excellent quality beef and pork, tender, generous portions, fairly priced and promptly prepared. The St. Louis ribs are my favorite item thus far. The chopped pork is very good, too. The beef brisket was tender and had some good richness, although I preferred the pork items. One caveat (hence the 1 star off in my rating): this is barbecue with no smoke. I’m assuming that the location in a small shopping area off Massachusetts Avenue in Spring Valley, DC does not allow for actual smoking. But if you’re willing to overlook this, I recommend Pitmaster’s Back Alley without reservation. Note: not sure if Pittmaster’s app allows you to order a different barbecue sauce with each dish. If not, I suggest that management upgrade the app to allow this.

Wow! Ladies and gentlemen, you have to be Houdini to find this place. Thank God I had one next to me. It was in our backyard and we had no idea. We accidentally ran into it. Boy, are you in for a surprise. This place looks like Ripley’s Believe It Or Not but the food is incredible. We ordered the Austin Brisket Sandwich and the Broasted Perch Sandwich along with the baked beans and the Mason Dixon fried okra as additional sides. It was incredible. The brisket melts in your mouth. Fried okra I love you. The baked beans with morsels of pork and bacon made me speechless. The tarter sauce and cole slaw were fabulous and the mother-in-law slaw had the wickedness of my former mother-in-law. I have never seen fries like the Texas Sidewinders. Crispy on the outside and light and fluffy on the inside. When I opened my box, the sidewinders portion was so generous I thought I was about to be surrounded by Turkish dervishes. So I had to immediately start consuming them before they started twirling around me. Folks, the hole-in-the wall ambiance might scare you as you enter. But, please be brave and take that extra step. You won’t regret it. The young man who took our order and the rest of his crew worked well together, like a fine Swiss watch. Thank you Houdini for not making it impossible to find one of the finest bbq joints in town.

Not only was the food really good, the gentleman working the night we ordered through a delivery 3rd party kindly and very generously brought the food to us himself bc the driver said he'd be a couple of hours delayed. We do not live closeby but he still went way out of his way to bring us our food one week night. That's incredible customer service and we will now be very loyal customers going forward. Highly recommend!

Excellent service. The brisket was nice and tender and the bun was exceptional. Sidewinder fries were good. I like to eat adventuresome, so I tried the Mother-in-law slaw. It was nice spicy, but a little more sour than I care for. But it was very nicely made, and had lots of good stuff in it. If I was more of a fan of sour, I would have loved it. In all fairness, they offered me the taste cup which is about 2 or 3 oz, and I asked for the whole side because I want to eat more! The side was actually enough for two people