Lunchbox: Pita Pit

Pita Pit
600 E. 36th Ave.
$8-$10 per plate
10 a.m. to 10 p.m. Sunday through Thursday, 10 a.m. to midnight Friday and Saturday
907-563-7482
http://www.pitapitusa.com/main.php?page=48&pitapit=290

While I usually visit local restaurants for Lunchbox, I’m not above stopping by chain restaurants that bring something new to the table, whether they’re Alaska entries like Taco King or fresh national arrivals like Olive Garden. With another franchise new to Anchorage having recently opened right here in Midtown, I thought I’d pay a visit.

Pita Pit is a franchise founded in Canada in the 1990s and subsequently brought to the U.S., with about 350 locations nationwide. The chain specializes in the flatbread Middle Eastern sandwiches but prepares them in a fashion which borrows elements from competitors Quizno’s and Subway, cooking meats on-site and assembling sandwiches to order at a salad bar of toppings and condiments.

Channel 2 reporter Jason Lamb and I showed up on a recent Thursday at the new restaurant, hidden in a newly built strip mall on the south side of 36th Avenue anchored by an Alaska Communications store. With road connections in the area relatively poor, the best way to get in and out is by heading east on 36th, then finding a space behind the building in the decent but heavily trafficked parking lot -- we had to wait a few minutes for a truck to leave before we could park ourselves.

I had thought we might score a coup by visiting relatively early around noon, since most of our newsroom staff responded to my mentioning the Pita Pit by asking what the place was, but the Midtown location is in full new-restaurant Anchorage rush. About 50 people were crowded into a space the size of a small Subway restaurant, intermittently forming lines as most people left with their food rather than await one of the dozen tables opposite the counter.

As we waited Jason and I took in the menu which features relatively flat pricing similar to the Brown Bag Sandwich Co., with all of its veggie pitas at $7.75 and its meat offerings all a dollar more. I ordered a Dagwood pita featuring turkey, ham and prime rib, while Jason went for a more traditional chicken souvlaki. We were then routed to a line which snaked around to the far side of the counter, but Jason suggested joining a shorter line to a second service point closer to the cash register. Once we got there, about 15 minutes later, we were asked what we’d ordered, then our meats were grilled up as other employees loaded up veggies and sauces into pitas; we went back to the station to eat, since all the seats were full.

I had built the Dagwood as a largely conventional sandwich, on a white pita pocket with lettuce, tomato, pickles and olives, but I couldn’t resist adding some zest with roasted red peppers, diced red onions and Caribbean jerk sauce (one of at least a dozen available condiments, ranging from mayo and mustard to barbecue sauce). The resulting sandwich was both sweet and spicy at turns, anchored by the savory crispness of the grilled-up bits of meat, which were rich and delicious beyond the sum of their parts. It took me a while to eat, since I was working as I did so, but the pita itself held up remarkably well, soaking up sauce and juices alike yet never breaking in my hands as I wolfed the sandwich down a bit at a time.

Jason took his chicken souvlaki -- which he’d constructed with ingredients like a thick spread of hummus and some tzatziki, then livened up with a coat of hot sauce -- back to an edit bay, from which it never emerged. I asked him about his pita later that afternoon and he had nothing but praise for it, telling me that there was “just enough” chicken in it to be satisfying without becoming overwhelming, and that the cooler ingredients balanced out the hot sauce to produce a heat level which was “just right.” I asked if there was anything Jason would change about the restaurant, and he told me: “Just the wait.”

Ever since we got back, word of mouth about Pita Pit has been spreading across the newsroom, a blend of curiosity about the name and how Jason and I fared during our visit. Many of the restaurant’s franchises are set up in college towns, and the late weekend hours -- until midnight on Friday and Saturday -- offer a quick fix of quality food to those in the know. For the immediate future, you might consider stopping by late not merely for an evening snack, but also to avoid the crowds.

Editor's note: The listed hours of operation for Pita Pit have been corrected after consulting the Anchorage restaurant's Facebook page.

Contact Chris Klint