Traditional pits are not legal, but there are high tech versions which still burn wood and smoke the meat like what Blue Smoke put in:

For their ''pit,'' Mr. Meyer and his partners bought two custom-built high-tech smokers from Ole Hickory Pits of Cape Girardeau, Mo., gleaming metallic vaults big enough to handle however many orders come from Blue Smoke's 170 seats, with another 140 seats in the Jazz Standard below. The pits use gas flames to ignite apple logs, which smolder and smoke meats that rotate through the smoker on metal shelves. A thermostat monitors the logs, with the gas flame ready to reignite them.

Aside from the litany of approvals all restaurants need to open, Blue Smoke required having its smokers approved by the Buildings Department's Materials and Equipment Acceptance division. Ole Hickory spent most of a year dealing with the city bureaucracy, Mr. Swinghamer said. ''They said they've never quite been through something like that before,'' he commented.

Creating the smokers was not nearly as difficult as getting rid of the smoke and other barbecuing waste. Smoke rises up twin 15-story chimneys that extend well above the 13-story building, sending those fragrant aromas directly to heaven, or at least to Long Island. Another system pipes fat from the bottom of the smokers to a cylinder below the sidewalk in front, from which it is siphoned by hose and carted away.

Unfortunatly, I don't think the results are anything spectacular at Blue Smoke.