Wingdale, N.Y. — About halfway between Great Barrington and New York City you’ll see a sign for Big W’s on Route 22 in Wingdale. Owned by Warren Norstein, a former French chef in New York City, Big W’s provides barbecue-deprived Berkshire residents with ribs, chicken, and other meats and chilis to eat on site or take home. It may be the only barbecue joint in America with a menorah in the window.
Like good barbecue places all over the U.S., the exterior of Big W’s is nondescript, giving no hint of the deliciousness inside save for the smoke emanating from the smoker. The restaurant’s back wall is lined with freezers, and most of the doors are chalkboard, now decorated with holiday greetings. The music is vintage Credence. Children’s drawings grace the walls. But as a collector, I was most taken by the impressive collection of decorative pigs letting the customer know what’s really important at Big W’s.
As you enter Big W’s, there’s a large menu board listing what’s available written in what I’ve come to call “barbecue English.” There’s three types of “smokin’ wiches”: “truly sensible,” which is one-third of a pound of meat of your choice with slaw and sauce. Then there’s “sensible,” which features one-half pound of your meat of choice, slaw, sauce “and a feeling of closure.” And then for those who aren’t afraid, there’s “roadside,” a whopping 1 1/3 pound of meat of your choice, open-faced on a bun with one side, sauce, “and a need for a nap.”
And so it goes at Big W’s. Mind blowingly delicious barbecue with a righteous sense of humor. The meat choices are pulled chicken, pulled pork, beef brisket, sloppy ribs, and burnt ends. Big W’s has some regular customers who sample all the choices. Other make a choice and stick to it visit after visit. Both types are absolutely right because you can’t go wrong no matter what you order.
Now that it is winter, it takes about 1 ½ hours to get the fires ready for smoking. Once the fire is hot, it takes three hours to smoke chicken wings. A 4-pound chicken takes 5 ½ – 6 hours. Yet a duck of the same size takes 10 hours because it is heavier in protein, albumin, and fat than chicken. Ribs take seven hours to smoke, and pork shoulder takes 14 hours. Then there’s brisket, which takes 17 hours to smoke. Norstein smokes all of his meats at 230 degrees.
One can buy specials or barbecue by the pound. And then there are the sides, the staples of barbecue joints everywhere: sweet corn pudding, pulled pork stuffing, cole slaw, smokey beans, mac-n-cheese, dirty mashed potatoes, dirty rice, hush puppies, and “something green.” For those who are not familiar with rib joint lingo, “dirty rice” comes from Creole cooking and is distinguished by its use of chicken livers that give it a “dirty” look.
Norstein’s menu started with just ribs, but he’s spent the past 14 years coming up with more selections. On one of my tasting trips, I enjoyed “sweet ‘n spicy pork bark,” which he makes when there are enough trimmings from pork shoulder to peel off the edges. Yes!
Like any serious cook, Norstein is able to make use of all the scraps. This ability to render scraps into something delicious is what “poverty cooking” is all about. “Barbecue parallels deli,” he says, “because it’s a butcher’s craft, not restaurant glitz.” Recently his gumbo was made from scraps of chicken, chili peppers, onions, smoked chicken stock, and leftover jasmine rice from the day before.
“Loins and breasts are the expensive cuts, so it’s what you do with scraps that is your margin,” he says. “Ribs are not so much a cut of meat as they are remnants when meat is taken away. Here in the Northeast we make pastrami and corned beef with what’s left after the choice cuts are used. In the South, where pork has traditionally been more popular, ribs, jowls, hocks, and shoulders are not prime cuts.”
Doing good barbecue means allowing for a lot of time for things to come out properly. A lot of wood for heat is needed, which means wasting a lot of time, but without the smoke it simply doesn’t work.
Barbecue is a method of cooking that is difficult to control. The fuel source produces the flavor, so using more or less cherry or oak or hickory will alter the flavor. On cold and rainy days, food cooks differently than on warm, sunny days so cooking times need to be adjusted. “There is a permissible range for flavor variation,” he says. And he enjoys the fact that each time his customers eat his food, it’s a little bit different.
Warren Norstein, born and bred in Brooklyn, ended up as a barbecue chef in Wingdale by accident. People typically do a double take when they learn that Norstein worked for 16 years as a chef in high-end New York City French restaurants. He worked for famed New York City chef David Bouley, Obama’s pastry chef Bill Yosses, Eric Ripert of the legendary Le Bernadin, and David Waltuck at Chantarelle. Quite the honor roll for a pitmaster.
Norstein is a family man, and when a family member who had helped take care of his children died, he stepped up and became a stay-at-home dad for a few years while his wife continued her work as a nurse.
BBQ was not even on his radar, but he wanted to cook something that he could do from home. So he started a smoked barbecue stand on Route 22 near Wingdale. He did his roadside barbecue five days a week for four years. Although he wanted to stop altogether, his customers pushed him to go year-round. After hearing so many testimonials to his food, he made his customers swear they would come in the winter. “And they have,” he notes.
Norstein’s voice is deep and bold, much like the radio announcers of yore. And, in fact, he used to work at WGLI AM in Long Island as an announcer. He was a truant officer for the Brooklyn Board of Education, and did a stint in advertising. But most of his working life has been with food.
“Big W” a moniker he earned in junior high school when he was one of the two Warrens in his class. He was tall and the other was not, so he became “Big W.”
Big W’s has been serving barbecue for 10 years. It is open Wednesday-Sunday from noon until 8 p.m. On Fridays and Saturdays, Big W stays open until 9 p.m. I’ve learned to time my trips to New York City with a stop at Big W’s on the way home. If you haven’t already done so, now’s the time.
