London is about to get another big new BBQ restaurant as Chelsea institution, Big Easy Bar.B.Q & Crabshack gets ready to open a new restaurant in Covent Garden's Maiden Lane early next year.
The city's BBQ market may be reaching saturation point, but the owners of Big Easy are coming out with fighting talk promising "the most authentic, American fresh-smoked Bar.B.Q, seafood, cocktail and drinks offer in the UK." Certainly they have some very impressive names involved.
The first is executive chef Kenny Callaghan, who is probably best known as the former chef partner of legendary New York Danny Meyer restaurant Blue Smoke and the founder of the Big Apple BBQ Block Party (which Hot Dinners has had the good fortune to attend and can testify to being a frankly brilliant BBQ event). Working with Kenny as Pit Master will be Pete Daversa, former pit master at Hill Country Barbecue Market in New York as well as Blue Smoke.
From what we hear they've had an interesting time working on the site on Maiden Lane which is a 19th century electrical power station and was used to power the first bright lights of the West End. So you can expect a pretty industrial interior design with copper conduits, brickwork, and steel and concrete girders in the three floored restaurant covering 10,000 sq ft.
On the lower ground floor will be a nine metre theatre-style kitchen with a (drumroll) ‘wall of fire’ which consists of two huge Argentinean-style parilla charcoal grills, a massive rotisserie spit big enough to roast whole hogs and a huge wood burning oven. In addition to all that there'll be a dedicated pit area featuruing two, 1.5 tonne wood burning smokers brought in from Texas. Meats will be smoked here using a variety of woods, including Oak, Hickory, Apple and Cherry, for up to 18 hours.
On to the menu - there'll be plenty of pork and beef cuts, rare-breed British steaks and seafood as wsell as Wagyu and USDA steaks plus a lot of lobsters. The lobsters will be sourced all year round from Nova Scotia and housed in a specially designed 1500kg lobster tank.
The ground floor will be the bar focusing on American whiskeys, as well as rare tequila, rum, liquor and French and Spanish brandy. They've brought in cocktail machines to serve up frozen Margaritas, Manhattans and Old Fashioneds on tap and there'll be the obligatory hard shakes on offer as well as craft beers.
Big Easy Covent Garden will open in February 2014 at 12 Maiden Lane, London. Keep up with their progress on Twitter @bigeasylondon
www.bigeasycoventgarden.co.uk
