Perth Voice Interactive

I  WAS cold and hungry and I needed a lot of meat, and Pleased to Meet You fit the bill.

Down on Roe Street, the yank barbecue joint was set up by La Cholita and Who’s Your Mumma founder Clint Nolan.

The place has a friendly communal eating hall feel, with strangers sitting at long benches together, the room warmed by the open coals roasting an unlucky piglet revolving on a spit.

The menu has about a dozen small sharey options, with the main show the five big dishes listed under the all-caps heading “ANIMALS”.

We started with a couple of serves of cornbread ($6), a civil war favourite and were served long, dense, moist blocks of golden cakey bread, a slight sweetness hovering on the border with savoury. And then you dunk it in the maple butter, sweet, golden, thick and creamy and just this side of dessert.

 soft, melty pork meat and a soothing mayo-like sauce…

The pulled pork sliders ($9/piece) were small but top-notch, the dense American sesame buns lightly toasted on the inside and housing soft, melty pork meat and a soothing mayo-like sauce. I could eat seven.

The baby chicken habanero was a true southern feast, a big hunk of bird (if this is the baby I don’t want to see the mama) with crispy-seared skin and some of the juiciest flesh I’ve ever had in a poultry dish. It was a more pricey $30, but there was plenty of meat on the bone and enough to be hacked up between three.

Finally there’s the meal you can’t not have, the signature dish spinning slowly on the spit: The coal-roasted suckling pig.

Your meal is carved from the carcass on demand and served with two distinct textures: crispy coal-touched skin and soft, rich inner flesh, dipped in a mysterious tangy green sauce. At $14 per 100g, I’d aim for one serving per carnivore at the table. You’ll want a whole serve to yourself once you taste it.

The beer selection’s pretty broad, ranging from the $48/bottle Bridge Road chevalier saison (750ml of hefty, fruity pale ale) to a $5.50 can of Emu Export, with a very tiny selection on tap.

A $120 bill left three people stuffed, staggering out with an Americana waddle.

The food was impressive, the prices pretty decent, and most admirably they’d avoided a painfully obvious pun in naming the place.

by DAVID BELL

Pleased to Meet You
38 Roe Street, Northbridge
Open dinner Monday to Thursday, lunch and dinner Friday to Sunday.