BATON ROUGE — You can smell it before you see it — smoke rises from the pit and crews slice brisket to order at City Pork.

For more than a decade, customers have packed the Jefferson Highway restaurant for barbecue that many say helped redefine the craft in Baton Rouge.

“I think we’ve tried to be authentic as best we can, from a smoking perspective,” owner Patrick Valluzzo said.

Valluzzo took over the business in 2017, when it was a single building on Jefferson Highway with about 35 employees. Since then, he has grown it into a regional brand.

“We’ve grown it to 12 restaurants with almost 400 employees,” Valluzzo said.

Despite the expansion, Valluzzo said the mission has stayed the same.

“The purpose of City Pork really was just to bring some authentic Texas barbecue to Baton Rouge,” he said.

Valluzzo said he saw the opportunity while working in the national fast-food industry and decided to make the leap into local ownership.

“I was looking to exit my former restaurant life, and they were looking to exit this,” he said.

Now, City Pork smokes hundreds of pounds of brisket every week. Valluzzo said consistency is key, from the type of wood used to the suppliers who provide it.

“Everybody can do it at home, and so how do we do it consistently, with maybe some different woods or a good, good wood supplier? All of those things really matter before we even prep the meat,” he said.

On this week’s Table for 2, we tried some of the dishes that keep customers coming back, including the City Pork BBQ Platter, loaded with brisket, pulled pork, ribs, andouille, coleslaw, baked beans and mac and cheese. It’s designed to feed two people and is the restaurant’s top-selling entrée.

The menu has also evolved over the years. In 2019, City Pork added breakfast, including the Bacon Bowl, packed with bacon, scrambled eggs, potatoes and the same rich cheese sauce featured on its mac and cheese.

Another staple is the Cubano sandwich, made with pulled pork, ham, Swiss cheese, house pickles and mojo sauce on Cuban bread.

“This is one of the core sandwiches that was started at the deli that has migrated to City Pork here and now is on all of our menus,” Valluzzo said.

City Pork is part of City Group Hospitality, which now operates multiple restaurant concepts across the region, each serving different food in different settings. But Valluzzo said every concept traces back to the original kitchen on Jefferson Highway.

“The core of all of these restaurants is that it all began here,” he said.