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Barbecue is the new Japanese food. It’s the hot thing to eat these days, just ask the harried employees of Turtle Crossing, Townline Barbecue or Spicy’s. Portions are very flexible to appetites, it’s got special requirements for eating (stacks of napkins instead of chopsticks) and there’s always lots of sauces involved. Everyone loves a sauce selection.
Perhaps best of all, to a business owner, barbecue is a great equalizer—stacks of pulled meats, slaws and beans stimulate the salivaries of carnivorous gentry and hoi polloi alike. It’s comfort food in uncomfortable times. It’s relatively cheap (certainly compared to Japanese food) so it’s accessible across the socioeconomic spectrum. The portions and places that it is served are usually family friendly but also usually have a bar, where adults might separate themselves a bit. And it travels well—you know, since it’s been cooked for three or four hours—so take-out is easy, popular.
Robin Metz hopes she is getting on somewhere near the ground floor of a local barbecue swoon. Late last month Ms. Metz threw open the doors of Big D’s BBQ in a small roadside former saloon on North Sea Road. The East Hampton native, the longtime purchasing manager for 75 Main restaurant in Southampton Village, says the family-friendly, low-cost, widely appealing BBQ menu may be exactly what the small space—most recently a Chinese take-out joint—on an artery leading to one of the area’s biggest residential regions is ideally suited for.
“I love this location because it is in a neighborhood,” Ms. Metz said, appropriately attired in denim before the lunch hour, with a cowboy hat pulled low on her thick dreadlocks. “This is an area with lots of families. I want to foster a family atmosphere.”
The requisite artifacts on the walls of Big D’s—some of the space is being left open for community artists without a gallery to display their work, Ms. Metz says—are properly Old West without being too kitschy or cluttered. A 19th century U.S. Army cavalry saddle, a wagon wheel, spurs and a powder horn hang on one wall. A giant flat-screen TV hangs on another wall, separate from the dining area, where take-out customers can sit on a long banquette while waiting for their orders.
Big D’s chef, Alvin Woods, can be most accurately identified as a student of barbecue. After working in the kitchen at Herb McCarthy’s famous Bowden Square restaurant for 24 years, he went on to another 20-plus-year career as a union driver. But when he retired, and found hobbies like golf didn’t hold his interest, he went to barbecue school—literally.
Paul Kirk’s School of Barbecue led to friendships with nationally renowned barbecue barons, trips around the country to barbecue conventions and festivals, and a small mobile pit-barbecue catering business. At the Big Apple Barbecue Festival in Manhattan this past summer, he sliced and served 2,000 pounds of brisket—a veritable Mt. Everest for a barbecue chef. For the time being, he’s back in the kitchen getting Ms. Metz’s barbecue menu on its feet. Mr. Woods’s kitchen was spotless on a recent weekday before the lunch crowd hit.
That menu reads as one would expect: with the words “platter” and “pulled” all over it. There’s dry rubs, BBQ and smokehouse. There’s baby back ribs, spare ribs, St. Louis ribs, pulled chicken, half chickens, pulled pork, brisket, sweet potatoes, apple sauce, catfish. There’s combos of every pairing of meats and sides a mathematician could come up with—and there’s Big D’s Pig-Out, which pretty much throws them all on the plate, with corn bread.
Big D’s is Kansas City barbecue, which emphasizes rich, tangy sauces on the meats. The sauce can be squirted, painted, slopped, dunked, splattered or poured on however you like.
The menu is also broad, including such additional (again, family-friendly) items as salads, nachos and quesadillas, calamari and hamburgers.
Portions are bold, prices are modest. Baby back ribs are $9 for a half rack, $18 for a full, with a small house or caesar salad for an additional $2. Combo plates—two meats, two sides and corn bread—are $15 to $17. A pulled pork, chicken or brisket sandwich is $6.50. Sides are $2.50. Refills are free on sodas.
Big D’s is currently open for lunch and dinner every day, from 11 a.m. to 8 p.m., or 9 p.m. on weekends. As of November 30, she still did not have a liquor license, but Ms. Metz said it was expected this month. Take-out orders are encouraged, either ordered at the door or on the phone.
Santa Claus will be in for lunch on December 20.
“I’m still looking for a man that fits the suit,” Ms. Metz said.
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