‘Something different.’ New Manatee restaurant serves Texas-style barbecue
Picnic tables, green paint flecks along the floor to resemble grass and a sign reading, “Welcome to our Backyard,” greet diners at Lakewood Ranch’s newest barbecue restaurant.
The Twisted Pit Barbecue, which opened in May, brings Texas-style barbecue to 8130 Lakewood Main Street, Suite 104.
It’s the third Lakewood Ranch restaurant from owners Zach Zeller and Evan Percoco. The pair also owns the Peculiar Pub and Percoco’s Pizza & Pasta on Main Street.
“We’re trying to take people away from all the corporate restaurants that are here,” Zeller said. “Just something different.”
Inside the 1,800-square-foot Twisted Pit, the Texas barbecue experience is recreated for Florida.
Upon entering, diners take a quick right to a sign giving them directions: “Get in line, grab a drink, hang out, grab some BBQ (and) share a table.”
The line starts near the front door, winding around the bar where a bartender takes your drink order. After waiting for your turn at the “back porch” kitchen counter, you select your food.
Placing orders at Twisted Pit
The first step is to choose your cold sides, dessert and hot sides before selecting your meat, which is carved in front of you.
“Ribs are a hot commodity around here and people love brisket, too,” Percoco said.
Cold sides consist of coleslaw, potato salad and a smoked pineapple and cucumber salad. Dessert options include peach and blueberry cobbler, banana pudding and cowboy cookies. The hot sides are street corn, green beans, collard greens, borracho beans and mac and cheese.
Brisket, spare ribs, pulled pork and turkey are among the meat selections prepared fresh, never frozen and cooked in a smoker well in advance.
“We have someone here 24 hours a day,” Percoco said. “When you have that much meat on the fire, you don’t want anything to go wrong.”
Percoco said they get their meat every two days. The brisket and pork are smoked overnight for 14 hours, while the turkey, ribs, lamb and sausage get smoked in the morning for four to five hours.
“But we’re doing things traditional,” Percoco said. “The brisket, we rub it down with beef tallow, and then it’s a salt and pepper mixture.”
A chance meeting turned business venture
Zeller and Percoco met during COVID-19 when a kitchen designer Zeller was working with said he should meet Percoco. The two hit it off, and a partnership in the restaurant industry followed.
They dabbled in barbecue with a pop-up concept, Atypical Kitchen, that was designed for delivery and lasted about a year.
“It was love at first sight,” Percoco recalled of his first meeting with Zeller. “His wife was there. We just hung out in the parking lot (of the Starbucks on State Road 70) and drank some coffee.”
Zeller said he fell in love with barbecue in Texas. He has been to Austin several times and opened his first barbecue spot in Indiana around 2008, before moving to Florida for another business right as opening day arrived in the Hoosier State.
“I never got to see it through all the way, and it’s kind of one of those things that I’ve always had this passion for barbecue, but I was never able to do it,” Zeller said.
That changed with Atypical Kitchen, which served as a crash course for Twisted Pit BBQ.
What are Twisted Pit’s hours?
The restaurant is open 3 p.m. to 9 p.m. daily or until supplies last. In Texas-style fashion, the food is fresh with side dishes made from scratch daily.
Each tray at the new Lakewood Ranch restaurant comes with white bread, pickled red onions and pickles.
The seating is family-style at large picnic tables to recreate a backyard feel.
A variety of sauces are on each table, too, with distinct names: Gramps’ Family Secret, Grandma Dianne’s Favorite Child, Uncle Brian’s Bad Decision, Aunt Jen’s Hot Mess Express and Cousin Karen’s Complaints. They range from a house sauce to a hotter sauce, an Alabama-inspired one and a Florida citrus-flavored sauce.
Additionally, tipping is not allowed at Twisted Pit BBQ.
“You’re coming into our backyard, right,” Zeller said. “You don’t tip your family. And so what we decided to do was let’s take care of our employees, make sure that they’re taken well care of, and they don’t rely on tips.”
For more information, visit TwistedPitBBQ.com.
This story was originally published June 16, 2025 at 5:50 AM.
