Courtesy Big V's
Baby back ribs, pit beans, and cheddar-bacon mac salad
What started as a hobby for St. Louis restaurant veteran Vito Racanelli during the pandemic has turned into a full-fledged business outside Missouri Beer Company (the former O’Fallon Beer Company) in O'Fallon, Missouri.
“I love beer, I love being around beer, and I love the guys at the Missouri Beer Company, because we push each other to do what we do better," he says. "So my wife and I started cooking out there once a week—Saturday barbecues, just like they do in Texas. We called it Big V’s Craft BBQ and never looked back.”
Today, the gospel of Big V’s continues to spread. “The smoker holds 500 pounds of meat,” Racanelli says. “Last week, I cooked 400.”
Courtesy Big V's
Saturday offerings include ribs, pulled pork, pork loin, turkey, smoked wings, burnt ends, and brisket, which Racanelli says is the quickest to sell out. He’s created a dozen sauces—all with different names and back stories. He challenges himself to think outside the box. (“When something piques my interest, I attack it”). The sauces are sweetened with honey, maple syrup, or fruit juices. “Most barbecue sauces are too sweet,” he says. “I don’t use any sugar at all.”
Courtesy Big V's
Beef brisket, pulled pork, side dishes
Having a fine dining background, a creative mind, and cherry-picked sources for produce, it’s no surprise that Big V’s side dishes are also standouts: cole slaw, pit baked beans, cheddar-bacon mac salad, Missouri street corn, Roma green beans with bacon, potato salad (his wife’s recipe), and burnt-end nachos.
Courtesy Big V's
Missouri Beer Company produces a handful of craft beers that it distributes to select bars and restaurants across the metro area. Racanelli uses the beers in sauces and brines.
“I brine my pork loin in the Kolsch, then dry-rub it and slow-smoke it over cherry wood,” he says. “Fruit woods, especially cherry, produce the best results for what we do, all around.”
Courtesy Big V's
Courtesy Big V's
Some St. Louisans might remember Racanelli from his Clayton restaurant, Mad Tomato. Or Onesto, the pizza restaurant that he founded on SoHa. There was Big V’s Burger Joint before that. And long before that, Racanelli’s Café in Clayton, where he worked with his father and two older brothers (who launched Racanelli’s Pizza).
Racanelli’s passion and infectious personality was apparent to anyone watching him emcee the chef’s competitions at the Taste of St. Louis. More recently, he was executive chef and culinary consultant at Anheuser-Busch, where he helped develop the Budweiser line of barbecued meats and sauces. He even created Budweiser Beer Powder, a key ingredient in developing the flavor profile for many of the products, including Budweiser Pub Cheddar Cheese spread.
Most recently, he was the force behind Brewer’s Crafted Pork, Heritage Berkshire Hogs that have been finished with 6-Row malted barley, the same grain that North American brewers use in beer production. When restaurants closed in March, however, the orders for Brewer’s Crafted Pork shrunk almost to zero. Grocery stores became more concerned with staples than specialty products. When stadiums shut down, so did demand for the cheese spread.
“On March 1, we had pallets of it ready to be shipped to stadiums across the country,” he says. “Then poof—every single order got cancelled.”
Courtesy Big V's
Vito Racanelli
A few weeks later, the tireless chef turned 47 years old and suddenly had a lot of time on his hands. Every day, he’d look in his back yard at his commercial smoker, a huge Southern Pride 500 SK. “I’d barbecued for years as a hobby,” he says, “and as the days passed, I kept feeling this tug. One day, I felt like the universe was calling, so I started doing R&D. It wasn’t about making money at that point; I was just trying to keep my mind occupied."
Now, every Saturday, you’ll find Racanelli chatting up guests while cutting meat to order. There are picnic tables for dining, or ‘cue can be taken to go. Eventually, Racanelli would like to build a Texas-style brick pit and cook using his own charcoal. In the meantime, he finds joy in loading up the smoker every weekend.
“In the midst of a pandemic," he says, "I found a happy place."
Big V’s Craft BBQ is open every Saturday from 1–7 p.m. at Missouri Beer Company (22 W. Industrial) in O’Fallon, Missouri. And look for Big V's after 5 p.m. on the first Friday of every month at Point Labaddie Brewery (1029 Thiebes) in Labadie, during its First Friday Jams.
