Smithtown BBQ Spot Reopens After Fire Shut It Down For More Than A Year

SMITHTOWN, NY — Big Belly Que has reopened after a 2025 fire in a neighboring unit forced the Smithtown barbecue restaurant to close for more than a year.

Owner and lifelong Smithtown resident Chris Emanuelo recalled receiving the call about the fire around 7:30 or 8 one morning, telling him firefighters were responding to a massive blaze in the Smithtown strip mall on West Jericho Turnpike that houses Big Belly Que. He initially was not particularly alarmed as the fire was not in his restaurant.

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Then the employee who called him told him he needed to come down.

By the time Emanuelo arrived, firefighters were working inside Big Belly Que as they tried to make sure the flames were contained. Although Emanuelo said the fire itself never reached his unit, the effort to stop it from spreading left the restaurant with extensive damage.

"They ripped the entire ceiling down," Emanuelo told Patch. "They were blasting holes all over the place, flooded all the walls."

What followed was more than a year of rebuilding, repeated delays, financial strain and uncertainty over whether the restaurant would ever serve another customer. At different points, Emanuelo said he considered giving up altogether.

Now, Big Belly Que is cooking again, its 10-person staff is back together and longtime customers who spent the closure asking when the restaurant would return are walking through the doors again.

His business partner, Kathy Lever, said longtime customers had been eagerly waiting for their return.

"We've been very lucky," Lever said. "All of our die-hard regulars have been eagerly awaiting us, so they've been storming the gates to get in here to get barbecue again."

Emanuelo credited the building's landlord with helping make the reopening possible, saying the landlord paid significant rebuilding costs out of pocket while waiting for insurance reimbursement and worked to get businesses throughout the strip mall operating again.

What Emanuelo initially believed could be a roughly three-month interruption stretched to six months, then nine, then 10. The closure ultimately lasted more than a year.

As those projected reopening dates repeatedly slipped away, the possibility that Big Belly Que might never return became increasingly real.

"Thank God for Kathy, my partner, because if it wasn't for her, I would have thrown in the towel," Emanuelo said.

Emanuelo said he became deeply discouraged during the closure as he and Lever tried to preserve both the business and the livelihoods of employees who had remained loyal to them. He estimated they spent about $60,000 of their own money trying to keep staff working as much as possible.

Eventually, they began contacting friends in the restaurant industry to ask whether they could temporarily employ Big Belly Que workers. Emanuelo said they were ultimately able to keep everyone working.

They also rented a prep kitchen in Islandia from business partners connected to a bar they co-own in Commack, allowing Big Belly to continue taking whatever catering work it could.

"We were prepping any catering that we could do to just keep any money in the business whatsoever," Emanuelo said. "It was very, very, very close to not being able to open back up."

For Lever, one of the hardest parts was knowing that Big Belly had been put in jeopardy by a fire that had not started in its own unit.

"To think that we could lose everything over something like that was devastating, absolutely devastating," Lever said.

The uncertainty compounded that frustration. Lever said they considered finding another location or changing the business model altogether, but could not make a major investment elsewhere without knowing whether their existing restaurant might suddenly be ready a month later.

"We were stuck in limbo with this great unknown of what could happen," Lever said, "and the potential of just not reopening was very real."

Emanuelo said the community response began on the day of the fire, when several people immediately offered to bring their own smokers so the business could continue cooking.

One of those offers came from the husband of a woman who would later become a bartender for Emanuelo at another business. At the time, he did not even know her.

The calls continued long after the fire trucks were gone. Emanuelo estimated Big Belly was receiving 10 to 15 calls a day from people asking what was happening and when they would be back.

He told customers perhaps three months, then four. But as winter arrived without the progress he had expected, Emanuelo said he stopped attempting to predict when the doors would reopen.

"I don't know, I'm not sure, I don't know what's happening," he recalled telling customers.

The customers themselves did not give up. People continued reaching out, and when Big Belly eventually announced that its return was finally approaching, Emanuelo said the response reminded him why he had kept fighting to save it.

"There's a lot of darkness in this world, but that — there are sometimes things that give you faith in humanity again, and that meant the world," Emanuelo said. "It really gave me something to fight for at that point."

Even near the end, reopening remained uncertain enough that Lever resisted announcing a date prematurely.

Only when the fire marshal finally gave the restaurant approval did Emanuelo allow himself to believe the comeback was real.

The team then worked about 16 hours a day preparing food and getting the restaurant ready.

Reopening day itself was not a serene victory lap.

Overwhelming," Emanuelo said. "It was a good feeling, but it was definitely overwhelming the first day, you know, because we want to nail it right off the bat."

The Big Belly Que team outside the Smithtown restaurant following its reopening after a yearlong closure caused by a 2025 fire.

The restaurant received what Emanuelo called a much-needed facelift during reconstruction. He generally works behind the scenes managing operations, while Lever is more often in the front of the house interacting with diners.

"Every single person that walked through the door was a 30-minute conversation with her," Emanuelo said. "Just how we missed you, thank God you're back."

Emanuelo believes the restaurant also fills a geographic niche. Located away from the heart of Smithtown's Main Street corridor and between Smithtown and Commack, Big Belly gives nearby residents another option without requiring a longer drive after work.

But he said the restaurant's strongest selling point is that the food is made fresh each day.

Restaurant ownership can be exhausting, Emanuelo acknowledged, and there are days when he questions whether he wants to continue doing it.

Then a customer tells him how much they enjoyed the food.

"It's the customers that make you want to keep doing it," he said.

Momentum can disappear quickly during an extended shutdown, which made the sight of customers waiting outside as Big Belly prepared to reopen particularly meaningful.

"To have everybody want to come back, want to see us come back, want to see us succeed, is more than we could ever ask for," Lever said. "There are almost no words to describe how grateful we are."