The smoker at 863 West Jericho Turnpike is running again. Big Belly Que, the Smithtown barbecue and burrito spot that went dark when a fire tore through its building in July 2025, has reopened its dining room and settled back into its regular week: Wednesday through Saturday from noon to 8:30, Sunday from noon to 7. Thirteen months after the last brisket came off the fire, Smithtown has its barbecue back.

The fire, and the long quiet after it

Just before 6:47 on the morning of July 27, 2025, Smithtown firefighters were called to the multi-tenant commercial building on West Jericho Turnpike and found heavy smoke pushing from the roof and several storefronts. The flames had broken out above the ceiling of the bagel shop in the building, and it took crews from seven departments to bring the fire under control by 7:33 a.m. Nobody was hurt. But the building that survived the morning did not simply go back to work. Big Belly Que, which occupies Suite 2, stayed closed through the rest of that summer, through the holidays, and through an entire second summer, its website carrying a banner that promised a reopening date that kept not arriving.

The closure ran so long that the business side of the restaurant effectively lapsed along with the dining room, which meant reopening was never going to be as simple as relighting the smoker. It meant starting over.

A fast finish to a long wait

When the comeback finally came, it came fast. We reported in August that the first concrete public signs of a reopening had surfaced after more than a year of promises. Within days, on Saturday, August 29, the doors opened for a first day of limited hours, and the restaurant announced it was resuming its normal schedule the following Wednesday, September 2. From first signs of life to full reopening took less than two weeks, a sprint at the end of a 13-month crawl.

The practical answer for anyone driving down Jericho Turnpike is simpler still. The restaurant is open, the bar pours again, the smoker is lit, and the schedule is the one regulars remember.

What came back

Big Belly Que did not start as a restaurant. It began in 2014 as Big Belly BBQ, a catering operation, and the storefront came later, which is why the menu has always read like a caterer's greatest hits rather than a purist's Texas shrine. The Angus brisket with a Texas dry rub and the St. Louis ribs anchor it, but the burritos are the tell that this place grew up feeding parties, and the kitchen keeps a Nashville hot chicken sandwich and even a jackfruit pulled pork for the table's vegan holdout. The owners, Chris and Kathy, have run it through both of its lives, trailer and dining room.

For 13 months the storefront sat as a reminder of how long a fire's damage outlives its flames, the kind of prolonged closure that usually ends with a for-lease sign and a different name on the door. This one ended the other way, with the same name on the same door and the same people behind the counter.

What it means for the reader

The comeback is complete, and it requires nothing from you except showing up between Wednesday and Sunday. If you spent the last year watching the dark storefront on West Jericho Turnpike and wondering, the answer is finally yes: same suite, same smoker, same menu, noon to 8:30 most of the week. The bagel-shop fire took a barbecue restaurant away from Smithtown for 13 months. As of the end of August, it has given it back.