Austin-style barbecue comes to town

to get a feel for cooking it,” he said.

“Robert Pearce actually drove our smoker up from Houston and I knew when it was coming at 8 o’clock on a Friday night. So I had my brisket all ready to go, I had it all rubbed down. As soon as he dropped it off, I fired it up.”

Mr. Pearce had dinner at Spork and stayed overnight at the nearby Ace Hotel Pittsburgh in East Liberty, with plans to leave first thing in the morning.

“I said on your way out of town, I want you to stop because my brisket should be done by then. Sure enough he came by about 8 o’clock. The brisket had been resting since about 5:30 a.m. I cut him off a slice, and he goes ‘Holy [heck]!’ ‘I’m like what?’ Hesaid, ‘you … nailed it!’”

“He said, ‘Listen, there are guys in Houston doing this five years can’t do that. So I just kept doing what I did,” he laughed.

Mr. Frangiadis, along with sous chef Rocco Caniglia have been perfecting their process for the past four months, adding smoked elements to the menu at Spork. They source their products from Strip District Meats and the menu currently includes beef brisket, pork ribs, pulled pork, turkey, chicken wings and a pork and beef blended sausage with cheddar cheese, cuminand peppers.

They’ll serve out of the lot on Wednesdays and Saturdays, from noon until the supply runs out. Eventually, they’ll move down the street in a partnership with Kevin Fisher, whose family has owned the nearby PennAiken Dairy since it opened in 1983. A neighborhood native, he’s worked there since he was 12, but he’s thrilled to be partnering with Mr. Frangiadis on Spork Pit, which will ultimately be in that building.

“We’re really excited to do this in particular because it’s something that everybody in the neighborhood can get behind, and it’s also something everyone can afford.”

“We can put a deck over the parking lot, rehab the building, put the pit outside and we can do this inexpensively and do it the way the Austin barbecues are — pretty barebones,” Mr. Frangiadis said.

Mr. Frangiadis came to Pittsburgh in 1991 and worked at some memorable restaurants of that era: Mount Washington’s Isabela’s on Grandview, Christian’s in Turtle Creek, Southwest Bistro in the Cultural District and Bikki in Shadyside. He left in 2004 for the balmier climes of St. John’s in the U.S. Virgin Islands and started a family there, but returned and opened Spork last year.

His resume is as diverse as the cuisine he’s prepared.

“I’ve just always been interested in anything that I don’t understand about food. And doubly interested if its something I really like in food,” he said. “If I eat something somewhere I think, I would like to make something as good as that.

“I don’t ever want to be that guy that just falls back into doing the same thing, he said. “That was then and this is now.”