Start out as a street food truck, gain a following and some good reviews, then finally evolve into a permanent, bricks-and-mortar restaurant – it’s a journey that many of London’s new restaurateurs and chefs have been on. Pitt Cue was one of the first, initially opening a small restaurant in Soho before moving into a big, shiny site in the City complete with its own brewery. But while it made its name serving fantastic barbecue, there isn’t a sauce-soaked pulled pork bun in sight. Pitt Cue serves barbecue with a distinctly grown-up, sophisticated vibe; it’s a shrine to the very finest rare-breed meat, where every part of the animal is treated like the finest fillet steak. But while founder Tom Adams and head chef Jacob Rosen see all animals as equal, it appears one pig in particular is more equal than others – the Mangalitza.
With their curly, coiffed fleeces, Mangalitzas are more like plump, personable sheep than pigs. Originally from Hungary, they were all but extinct in the 1990s, but thanks to a small group of dedicated farmers they were brought back from the brink. Large-scale farmers just weren’t interested in them – they produce much less meat than other commercial breeds like the Duroc, so they fell out of favour pretty quickly. In the past few years, however, that’s all changed; Mangalitzas are back on the menu, and it seems people can’t get enough of it.
‘Mangalitzas are such idiosyncratic, friendly pigs – they love a face rub – but they’ve never really been appreciated commercially because they have all these characteristics you wouldn’t want if producing pork on a large scale,’ says Jacob, who works closely with Pitt Cue’s co-founder Tom. ‘They have a very high fat content, produce smaller litters and need more care than other breeds. Their loins – the most expensive part of the pig – are also very small, and they can’t be slaughtered as young as other pigs because you need to wait for them to develop their intramuscular fat. I think most commercial pigs are slaughtered when they’re nine or ten months old, but we wait at least a year and a half with our Mangalitzas.’