The Bear Pit

“Ordinary folk prefer familiar tastes - they'd sooner eat the same things all the time - but a gourmet would sample a fried park bench just to know how it tastes.”
--- Walter Moers

 

THE BEAR PIT

10825 Sepulveda Boulevard

Mission Hills, CA 91345

818-365-2509

11:30 AM to 9:00 PM   Sunday through Thursday

11:30 AM to 10:00 PM  Friday and Saturday

http://bearpitbbq.com/

 

This is one of those barbecue places that has been around long enough to qualify for historical landmark status.  I’ll leave it to you to read the history at their web site, but it has been at the current location for 58 years.  I remember eating here as a pre-teen with my parents.  Although it has had a succession of owners since then it hasn’t changed much.

It’s so close to the 118 Freeway that you wonder how it survived the freeway’s construction.  It did in close to its original form.  The feeling is 1950’s country woodsy…just what you would expect from a 1950’s barbecue restaurant.  There is sawdust on the floor and the booths have wooden slat benches.  The back room is for larger parties and has tables with sturdy wooden chairs.  A sign on the back wall of the front dining room says that tables are for parties of five or more. Below the sign is a lighted Hamm’s Beer sign.  Oddly, the sign is not one that shows, Sascha, the Hamm’s Beer Bear.  The room was also decorated with Christmas decorations.  We were shown to a booth where the park bench style wooden slats seemed hard at first sitting but were actually quite comfortable after a while.

Our server gave us their somewhat coffee shop like menu that is profusely illustrated with bear cartoons and photos that, unlike some fast food commercials, accurately show the appearance of the food.  She also placed a rather nice, crisp relish plate of sliced dill pickles, carrots and celery.  Being an older, Missouri style barbecue place their menu does not include pulled pork but does include ham.  I ordered a Hot Links Combination   with Baby Back Ribs, Cole Slaw, and Deep Fried Taters.  Sharon ordered a Barbecued Pork, Spare Ribs and Chicken Combination along with a Beef Rib, a salad and Bar-B-Q Beans.  This all comes with Garlic Toast.

Garlic Toast

We have to start with the Garlic Toast.  Everyone who has been here talks about the Garlic Toast.  They all say it is impressive, and it is…physically that is.  They have the bread baked especially for them.  The slice for each serving is about a half square foot in size.  It is brushed with garlic butter and toasted.  The problem is that it’s just coffee shop garlic toast…which is not particularly a bad thing, but I have had much better tasting garlic toast.  What you can say is that when you see it, it is impressive.

Salad

The relish plate was crisp, the salad was not.  It did not seem to be fresh, some of the lettuce was turning brown and the blue cheese dressing tasted more like “blue cheese” dressing.  As a basic house dinner salad it was unacceptable.

Cole Slaw

This was worse, it was really soggy, probably not to the point of violating the health code, but it had definitely been out too long.  I enjoy cole slaw and if I take a bite from one side and one from the other and just leave it you know it’s not worth it.  This time it only took one bite.

Bar-B-Q Beans

As we have experienced at other places barbeque beans can be an exciting treat.  Here?  Well, they were beans…just plain beans with a too sweet sauce that seemed to be made with their barbecue sauce.  They were not hot, a bit tepid when served, and were just bland beans. 

Deep Fried Taters

Now, these are actually interesting.  They are exactly what it says they are, little potatoes, peeled and deep fried.  My only complaint is that there should have been more of them on the plate.

Chicken

The chicken was quite good, if you want fried chicken.  They smoke the chicken and then crisp it in the fryer.  It seemed that that night it was not enough smoke and too much frying.  As I said, for fried chicken, it was rather good, cooked through and not dry.

Baby Back Ribs

Baby back ribs should not disappoint.  In the sense that these were the best meat on the plate, they didn’t.  They were tender, quite meaty and not too fatty.  The smoke flavor was barely detectable.  I would say that this is one of the few times that the basic flavor of the meat was improved by putting the sauce on it.

Spare Ribs

These were not as meaty as the back ribs and a little tough.  They actually seemed to be a bit stringy, something you seldom find in pork.  Again, the smoke flavor was extremely light and the sauce improved them.

Beef Rib

There’s nothing good to say about this one.  It was sparse, tough, stringy, over sauced.  They seemed to have double glazed it, but it was so hard that it was hard to tell how the meat actually tasted.  When hot it was like trying to chew on beef candy and as a leftover it was discardable.

Barbecued Pork

One expects good barbecued pork to be done through but moist and flavorful.  This was a bit too done and again, the sauce saved it.

I really hate to have to write a post like this, so much so that I actually put it off for a week.  The people here are nice enough and they are trying to maintain a tradition.  But, when we chose to blog we decided to simply relate our experiences with the restaurant and the food.  They have a claim to consistency even through four owners, maintaining the same recipes, techniques and quality of service, but something seems to have gone wrong.  It’s almost as though we experienced an institution going senile.  We give it a four.