image c/o NY Times

From City Search:
The Scene: Homegrown and homemade, you'd be hard-pressed find a more low-key restaurant in the five boroughs: A few stools crowd the closet-sized ordering area that doubles as a kitchen, where orders are scribbled on scrap paper, and change is made in a ceramic cup. In warmer months, patrons dig into country favorites served on checkered tablecloths in a side alley, while the Williamsburg Bridge traffic and trains whiz overhead.

The Food: Eating here is like attending a well-rounded country picnic. Juicy fried chicken, coated with a crispy, light batter, gets sided with a fluffy, buttery biscuit. And light and flaky fried catfish sings with its crunchy cornmeal coating. Carolina ex-pats will want to jump on the vinegar-heavy pulled pork sandwich, topped with a tangy slaw and served on a white-bread bun. Homemade fruit pies look and taste so homemade, you might be tempted to ask where they're hiding grandma.

AOL City Guide:
Everything they warned you about is here: fried food, lard, a cramped kitchen, non-existent waiters, a bridge obstructing the view, a sketchy neighborhood. So what exactly is the allure of this barbeque spot in Brooklyn? Please see above. This tiny eatery is literally a hole-in-the-wall of the Rock Star Bar, bungee-jumping distance from the Williamsburg Bridge. 100 square feet of old-fashioned wood-and-tile makes up the whole joint -- seven stools, no tables and a counter is all you get. As the name suggests, the specialty is Southern comfort food and homemade baked goods. Thighs are the job of the Georgia boy, who mans the backyard smoker with fried chicken, pulled pork and catfish. Cookies, biscuits and pies (key lime, rhubarb, peanut butter) are baked by the California girl. Cash only, since there's not even room to swipe a card.

From NY Times
THE smoke-licked shoulder meat, shredded into ropy strands and dressed with an ample squirt of an aggressively vinegary barbecue sauce, was served on a supermarket white bread burger bun spread on one side with minced cabbage slaw.

That delicious two-napkin mess of a pulled pork sandwich ($8) had a tendency to dissolve as you ate it: the bun liquefied as a mix of sauce and porky moisture soaked it through.

Stephen Tanner, a Georgia native, is the man behind the pulled pork and the savory side of the short, affordable and generally excellent menu of comfort food with a Southern accent served at Pies 'n' Thighs, a new spot in Williamsburg, Brooklyn.

He smokes shoulders in a New Braunfels offset smoker (which, like most things in southern Williamsburg, wears a spray of graffiti), in the fenced concrete yard that serves as his restaurant's dining room.

It is a modest if not threadbare setup. The restaurant, such as it is, occupies a tiny closet of a kitchen that for years sat unused — save to house beer — in back of the Rock Star Bar, a dive so cinematically seamy and purposefully out of the way that it spurred me to imagine all kinds of unlawful scenarios playing out between its walls.

But the charms of a dinner at one of the gingham-clad tables in the yard, with the Williamsburg Bridge providing the soundtrack far overhead, were impossible to resist.

Almost as impossible to resist were Sarah Buck's pies ($4 a slice, $24 whole). Or her cookies ($2). Or her biscuits ($1.50). Ms. Buck is the other half of Pies 'n' Thighs; the classic cookies and pies she makes for the restaurant are on a par with the best homemade baked goods I have ever had the fortune of eating. Lately she's been serving a rhubarb pie in addition to her core repertory of Key lime, chocolate pudding and peanut butter pies.

One night, dining with a very large group, a friend and I went in from the backyard and ordered nearly every slice of every pie she had. She complained happily, as she dished them out, that she would have to get up "really early tomorrow." I was sorry to ruin her morning but glad she was so committed to daily pie baking.

Ms. Buck bakes the white bread for the commendable grilled cheese ($5), and the biscuits on which one can get a fried bacon, egg and cheese sandwich ($5) with a glass of just-squeezed orange juice ($3) after 11 a.m. six days a week.

One of those big, buttery, flaky but sturdy biscuits also came with orders of fried chicken ($8) that was piping hot, a little greasy and a lot salty, with glisteningly moist flesh beneath its crisp skin.

Mr. Tanner's pulled pork isn't reserved exclusively for sandwich stuffing: you will encounter a goodly amount of it atop side orders of vinegary collards ($3) and a fair bit of it in bowls of Brunswick stew ($5), along with okra, corn, tomatoes and, as Ms. Buck put it, "whatever other veggies we've got on hand."

Aside from the Brunswick stew, veggies were not the restaurant's strong suit. (Even an iceberg salad, which was $3, seemed underloved.) But at a place that serves legitimate pulled pork — the kind you'd brag about to your city slicker friends after a road trip through the Carolinas — that's not saying too much.

Deep-fried dishes like green tomatoes ($3) or catfish ($8, served with corn bread) were a better bet. Hush puppies ($3) were served in coffee mugs and doused with a loose homemade tartar sauce. After a mug of puppies had gone around the table one night, all that remained at the bottom was a mix of roughly chopped pickles, suspended in cream, dotted through with irregular bits of overfried corn meal batter. It was the dregs of the order and was unspeakably good.

In Pies 'n' Thighs Mr. Tanner and Ms. Buck have cobbled together a restaurant that makes their loves clear: good Southern cooking and great baked goods. (And since every time I saw Mr. Tanner he was wearing a Led Zeppelin T-shirt, we can assume they love Zep, too.)

It's a compelling combination, well executed and put forth with real heart — the sort of restaurant that's hard to find, especially in the big city, but easy to love once found.

BEST DISHES Pulled pork sandwich; fried chicken; Brunswick stew; hush puppies; burger; all pies and cookies.

From NY Press:
“Do you eat meat?” asks bushy-bearded Steve Tanner. He’s holding a pan of freshly smoked, oven-roasted pork.

I nod.

He hands me a crispy-yet-tender chunk. I chew. Smoky sweetness oozes onto my tongue, the steaming pork warming my stomach like young love.

“Good, right?” he asks, groaning.

I moan my approval, a not uncommon response to eating at Pies ’n Thighs, a southern-fried nugget crammed in an improbable locale: beneath the Williamsburg Bridge, in a walk-in-closet kitchen wedged inside the dingy Rocky’s bar. Thankfully, good things come in small packages, and Tanner and his partner, Sarah Buck (she bakes; he handles meat), have wrung magic from modest surroundings.

The month-old greasy spoon is announced by a hand-painted green-and-white sign, the sort spied on dusty country roads. It feels rustic and homey, and it makes perfect sense. Red stools, a black-and-white tile floor and a cookbook-packed bookcase mimic grandma’s kitchen. Heck, one evening, three women commandeered the stools to shuck fava beans.

“Don’t mind us,” Buck said, popping beans from the pod. “Just tell me when you’re ready to order.”

The block-lettered signboard focuses on artery-clogging standards like fried catfish and collard greens, but I recommend whetting your appetite with the fried chicken ($8). Three palm-sized pieces are served, glistening, golden and fryer-fresh, alongside a flaky biscuit and a side. (Smart eaters will select the cornmeal-battered fried green tomatoes.) The chicken is crunchy, juicy and less greasy than a Hawaiian Tropics model. I’m often compelled to rip into the drumstick flesh with my canines, like a feral animal.

I also abandon my manners when eating the Carolina pulled pork sandwich ($8). It’s topped with a construction-paper-thin pickle slice and homemade coleslaw, then squirted with hot sauce and vinegar. Creamy, sour, smoky and messy, it’s a taste bud roller coaster. The fried catfish ($8) is equally plate-cleaning—and palate-maddeningly—good. Warm, buttery cornbread is paired with two cornmeal-encrusted filets, destined to be dipped in a revelation:

“Hands down, this is the best tartar sauce I’ve ever tasted,” said my dining companion, a longtime waiter. “And I hate tartar sauce.”

Gone is the goopy pabulum, replaced by a rarefied mix of mayo, pickles, lemon juice and onion. It’s a dipping delight, also great with the nickel-size hush puppies. The whole meal is best washed down with sweet tea ($2) or fresh-squeezed lemonade ($2). Can’t decide? Try the Arny Palmer, a 50-50 mix. Or buy a Rocky’s beer. Bartenders will pour it into a plastic cup, which you can sip in Pies’ “dining patio”: a barbed-wire courtyard, sprinkled with tables topped by red-and-white checkerboard tablecloths. The industrial locale screams Williamsburg, but the titanic portions are a reminder that this remains a southern kitchen.

“He always gives you too much food,” Buck lamented to me one night, as I labored over my last fried-chicken morsel. “No one saves space for pie.”

Don’t make this mistake. Split a chicken or catfish box with a dining companion, for Buck’s desserts are sweet-tooth treats. The peanut butter pie ($3.50) is Reese’s done right: peanut butter base crowned with peanuts and a thin chocolate layer. Also exemplary are the farm-fresh key lime and rhubarb pies, which, if you ask nicely, Buck will cap with homemade whipped cream.

For once, forget you’re a normal New Yorker and make early-evening dinner plans. Pies ’n Thighs stops frying by 9 p.m., and one visit saw everything but pies vanished by 7:30 p.m. Another night, bye-bye fried green tomatoes and mac ’n cheese. There’s also bad news for vegetarians: Even innocuous dishes, like the superior collard greens and baked beans, are pork-infused. Instead, stick to desserts and the weekend brunch. Donuts, buckwheat pancakes, biscuits and eggs will appease, if hangover-killing grease punches your ticket.

But these are the minor trifles of a man paid to be critical. Pies ’n Thighs is one of New York City’s most heartwarming, belly-filling restaurants. You can gab with the owners and slag the ’70s rock blaring from the kitchen radio. Or reach behind the counter and grab the jug o’ honey. Pies is as unpretentious as your best friend’s apartment, with prices fit for a pauper. My major complaint is that the food’s too damned addictive. I rue the day I’m dragged away from Pies ’n Thighs, kicking and screaming, licking my fingers and begging for just one more taste.