The Improper Pig Team Wants to See People Dining In Again

When the Pizza Peel & Tap Room opened in the heart of Plaza Midwood in 2014, the garage doors of the former Woodward’s Gulf gas station opened up onto a turf lawn that would become the eatery’s defining feature.

Picnic tables bordered the artificial green at the corner of Central and Thomas avenues, with a disc golf basket set up in the middle and plenty of room for kids to run around.

Will Bigham, Pizza Peel’s owner and founder of the Stomp, Chomp & Roll restaurant group, put the basket there because he is an avid disc golfer, but over the decade that the restaurant operated at the busy corner, he came to regret the decision.

“I’m a huge disc golfer … so it was fun, but then we had kids ripping frisbees into the street or customers drinking a beer and getting hit,” he recalled to Queen City Nerve, laughing. The lawn came to be known as a haven for children. “Some parents don’t always watch their kids and it’s like, well, our servers aren’t babysitters.”

Count it as another lesson learned for the restaurateur who launched his company in 2010, starting with franchises such as Flying Biscuit and Mama Fu’s before opening his own independent restaurants, Pizza Peel and The Improper Pig.

Bigham and his team shut down the Plaza Midwood Pizza Peel location in May 2024 and have been working since then to transition the space into the flagship location of The Improper Pig.

That Asian-barbecue fusion restaurant opened its first location in 2014 and currently operates in two spaces: Rea Farms in south Charlotte and Fort Mill, South Carolina.

When the new location opens up later this fall, the disc golf basket will be long gone, replaced with Adirondack chairs and fire pits.

“We’re still welcoming the kids and all that, but it’s not a playground out there,” said Bigham.

In fact, as the first Stomp, Chomp & Roll restaurant to open since COVID changed the face of the restaurant industry in 2020, Bigham is hoping to make Improper Pig a gathering place for family and friends in a time when delivery and to-go meals have become the new norm for diners throughout the city.

He said all of his establishments have pivoted to some extent to cater more to delivery and to-go customers, but his focus remains on the experience one takes from dining in.

“That’s what we really want is people to come in, sit down, have great food, enjoy the experience of it all, the music, everything,” he said. “I still want to focus on that in-house [experience], people coming in … We’ve created so much more waste now as consumers because everybody’s eating from to-go containers as opposed to coming in, sitting down, having a good meal, and actually taking time with each other and looking each other in the face.”

What makes the Pig Improper?

Bigham opened the first Improper Pig restaurant in Cotswold in the space that had previously been home to Mama Fu’s for 10 years. Having opened his first independent restaurant, The Pizza Peel, in a former Mellow Mushroom location, he knew how to build a menu around what equipment was in the kitchen.

In the case of Mama Fu’s, that meant working with a big wok. He started to envision a menu that blended three styles he had never seen put together before: barbecue, vegetarian food and Asian flavors.

“I always loved barbecue being from North Carolina,” he said. “I was like, ‘Hey, let’s do something fun.’ Being that we had a ton of vegetarians that used to come eat at Mama Fu’s, I wanted to highlight a lot of menu items that were still vegetarian, and at that location, we still had the big wok in the kitchen, so we did a lot of Asian flavors as well.”

What resulted was a mish-mashed menu that ranges from ahi tuna and chicharrones to Southern hush puppies and baked mac and cheese — and those are just the appetizers.

Vegetarians enjoy the smoked tofu, collard greens and No Pig Sandwich, which features a marinated portobello mushroom cap topped with roasted red peppers, pickled onions, smoked tomatoes, mixed greens, goat cheese and a drizzle of pesto.

“I love to add fresh jalapenos to it because I do like spice, but that sandwich has got so many layers,” said Bigham. “It’s just killer.”

The top seller for meat eaters is the Improper Charcuterie, a sampler platter of sorts that includes pulled pork, sliced brisket, andouille sausage, St. Louis-style ribs, pimento cheese, house chips, slaw, pickled onions and hush puppies.

“If you want to really experience barbecue at its best and be able to taste the gauntlet of everything, that’s the best way to go,” said Darius Amidi, operations manager at Improper Pig. “I always recommend, get a charcuterie plate, that’s enough for two people to share, then get a side plate so you can pick four side items that you want to try with it.”

Amidi met Bigham while working for Harper’s Restaurant, which Bigham’s father owned in part. Having come up working alongside his own dad in the hotel industry before joining Harper’s, Amidi brought a specific hospitality experience to the job when he joined Stomp, Chomp & Roll nearly 14 years ago.

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He has since brought on his kids to work for the company, starting his son as a dishwasher at Pizza Peel and his daughter as an hourly employee at Flying Biscuit. They now work as a general manager and head of catering, respectively.

Amidi shares Bigham’s vision for The Improper Pig in Plaza Midwood becoming a gathering spot rather than simply a go-to for to-go customers, as so many establishments have become.

“We’re wanting to bring back that dining experience to people so that people don’t get so complacent on wanting the convenience factor, but wanting the experience factor instead,” Amidi told Queen City Nerve.

“That’s the hardest thing I think I struggle with is that I’m like, man, I really don’t understand why so many people are so hooked on spending the extra money on a third-party platform versus coming in and letting us serve them, take care of them and build that experience.”

Bigham said that, when he first opened The Improper Pig in 2014, some people scoffed at the idea of an Asian-fusion barbecue joint in a state known for a very specific, traditional type of pork, but in the decade-plus since arriving in Cotswold and then expanding to south Charlotte and South Carolina, folks have built an understanding of what he’s doing.

“We did get some pushback from some people, and we still do; some people, it’s too flavorful for them,” he said. “We’ll get a complaint like, ‘Oh, there’s just too much flavor, it’s too spicy,’ or this and that. But that’s just who we are. We’re bold at it. That’s the way I like food. It’s bold.”

Bold, perhaps, but far from improper.