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It's usually not a promising sign when a restaurant's outdoor patio is enclosed by a fifteen-foot-high barbed-wire fence. At Pies-N-Thighs, though, you might say it's part of the charm. The makeshift southern-style kitchen that operates out the back of Williamsburg's Rock Star Bar has an air of what might politely be called a rough, postindustrial outer-borough chic. In other words, it's a dive, but a dive in the best sense of the word. Stephen Tanner and Sarah Buck, from nearby Diner, cooks the kind of honest home-style vittles you might hope to stumble upon while tootling along some southern backroad. She bakes the breads, the biscuits, and the type of picture-perfect double-crusted pies that, when customarily placed atop a windowsill to cool, hoboes find hard to resist. Meanwhile, another former Diner employee oversees the pit-smoked pulled pork, the fried chicken, the juicy burgers, and the spicy macaroni and cheese. All of it can be gulped down at a slim counter inside the greasy kitchen nook that formerly served as a beer closet. But down-home cooking of this caliber is best enjoyed amidst the barbed wire and weedy plants, or what the locals cheerfully refer to as “out back in the prison yard.” — Rob Patronite and Robin Raisfeld

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