Return of the pitmaster

An Eastern North Carolina barbecue whiz aims for a comeback with a Raleigh restaurant

On a Saturday in November, Ed Mitchell stands in front of his new staff wearing frayed overalls, a flannel shirt and scuffed work boots. He's ready to let them in on a secret.

Many of the waiters and cooks are holdovers from Nana's Chophouse, the white-tablecloth restaurant that closed to make way for The Pit, Mitchell's comeback venture. Mitchell, a 61-year-old barbecue pitmaster with a bushy white beard, looks out of place against the dining room's gleaming glass and polished maple interior. But here's what his new staff needs to know: His clothes are a costume.

"This is a persona. This is an image. Back in the day, they wore bib overalls. This is what the pitmaster is," Mitchell says. "This is what got me national fame. This is how I ended up on the front page of The New York Times." Later in an interview, Mitchell explains: "I can't market the old-fashioned way of barbecue if I got a three-piece suit on."

It is Mitchell's knack for self-promotion, as much as his skill at cooking Eastern North Carolina barbecue, that has helped him survive the recent turmoil of his life. But then, Mitchell will tell you that his recent troubles were due in part to his need to chase the limelight.

In 2005, a bank foreclosed on Mitchell's nationally lauded restaurant in his hometown of Wilson. A year later, tax problems landed him in jail for a month. Mitchell filed extensive litigation against the bank, which was settled a few weeks ago. While he has the keys back, Mitchell says the Wilson building will never be a restaurant again. Instead, he's focused on his new venture.

About a year ago, Mitchell formed a partnership with downtown developer Greg Hatem, whose devotion to historic preservation has moved beyond buildings to barbecue. Mitchell is one of only a few African-American pitmasters cooking Eastern North Carolina barbecue, and he remains a national foodie icon. Together they opened The Pit in November.

Mitchell hopes the new partnership will lead to the success he dreamed of years ago: a chain of restaurants. This run at building a restaurant empire is different. His previous failure acquainted him with his limitations. He's leaving the front of the house and the books to Hatem and his Empire Eats company. Mitchell will tend to the kitchen and the marketing.

Cultivating his image is Mitchell's long suit. It has made him a media darling, more so than any of the other North Carolina barbecue stalwarts east of Interstate 95.

In the foodie kingdom

In June, as in every summer since 2003, Mitchell cooked at The Big Apple Barbecue Block Party in New York City. In September, producers of Gourmet magazine's "Diary of a Foodie" filmed a segment on Mitchell that will air on public television in April. (UNC-TV airs the show at 3 p.m. Saturdays.) In October, he returned for a third time to cook at the Southern Foodways Alliance's symposium, a gathering of food devotees and media tastemakers that has embraced Mitchell as a god of pork.

At the alliance's annual gathering at Ole Miss, you never know whom you might end up talking to over a glass of whiskey -- a New York Times food writer, a James Beard award-winning chef, a curator at the Smithsonian's National Museum of American History, a country ham purveyor from Tennessee, or Roy Blount Jr. Most symposium veterans know Mitchell, either shaking his hand over the buffet line or sneaking a peek inside the tractor-trailer where he was cooking his hogs.

Standing behind a spread of pork in those well-worn overalls, Mitchell looks the part of the old-school pitmaster who has spent his life tending the coals. It surprises even some of his closest associates to learn that he spent about a dozen years wearing three-piece suits as a midlevel manager for Ford Motor Co. before taking up his current profession.