Big Mic’s in Kuna originally started as a bar and music venue, the kind of place owner ‘Big Mike’ Larson felt he should do because “Kuna needed something where everyone felt welcome, like Cheers when they walk in the door. Just a place to relax, a good clean non-smoking place to relax and listen to music”. Fast forward to a year after opening and Big Mic’s in Kuna has now introduced a barbeque menu, bringing smoked delights to hungry guests. Big Mike and his wife Marisol talked to The Boise Beat about Big Mic’s in Kuna, music and art, the bar, barbeque, the community and much more.
Q: So you just had your first-year anniversary at Big Mic’s in Kuna?
A: July 1st,, 2018 was one year from when the bar was completed and everything was opened.
Q: Five weeks ago you decided you wanted to add a food menu?
A: From the beginning we wanted to add food. We’ve taken baby steps, instead of taking too much on and not being able to do it well. We wanted to get our roots in, get ourself planted in the community, get the saloon going and the music venue going first. Then we’d introduce the food when we thought we were ready and could do a good job.
Q: And it’s more than just food to you, it’s a passion……
A: Exactly. Forty-two years of self-proclaimed professional BBQ! (laughs). I’ll let you be the judge of that, you’re the judge!
Q: what are the highlights of the menu at Big Mic’s in Kuna?
A: It depends on what you like, but the brisket, we put a lot of love in that. Everything we make with a lot of love into it and take our time. Good barbeque you run out of and when it’s gone, it’s gone. You have to wait for the next batch to come out. Our brisket, our pulled pork…
(Marisol adds) RIBS are the highlight.
(Big Mike) She loves the ribs. We do things different, I like to do standalone things, I’m not a copycat. I want to make my own so that when somebody tastes it it’s recognized for it’s own, not simulated or compared to somebody else. I’m doing a similar thing with our smoked potatoes, we call them “taters”. There is a lot of love and time that goes into too. Barbeque is love, if you don’t put the time into it isn’t going to be good. The potatoes are like a piece of meat to us, it’s almost the same thing involved; and we’ve been going through fifty pounds a day just being open five weeks, so it tells us that everyone’s pretty well received them.
Our hamburgers—we wanted a hamburger in the Valley that wasn’t trimmed meat, that was from good cuts of meat, so we used front shoulder clods that are fresh-ground. I’ll never make a hamburger out here that’s been in the freezer, you’ll never have anything that’s been frozen. We have a steak called the Pan-head Steak, like the pan-head Harley; and that’s the most delicious cut of meat that you’ll have in your life. That comes off the top of the front shoulder and it’s about an inch thick. It’s marbled so well that it’s like a piece of Kobe beef, it’s just remarkable. I’ve never had one complaint. I don’t know if you could cook that thing wrong or not because it’s just that good a cut of meat—it’s delicious.
The other thing is, we’re just trying to keep ourself to a minimum smaller menu right now. In the back of our minds, we’ve bought the hardware store next door. That will be our restaurant, eventually merged in with the footprint here. Then we’ll broaden the menu and it will be more of a steakhouse/smokehouse probably.
Q: You’ve got the usual liquor and beer choices, but you also have craft beers and high-end rare liquor…..
A: Yes. We’ve got 16 draft beers with a lot of local ones. We rotate the taps and the ones we don’t have are in cans. The ones that are anchor beers that I buy are Lagunitas, Buzz Buzz which is a coffee beer, the Tangerine Orange which is a real popular one, Mac and Jacks Beer, 805—some of those we interchange and then some seasonal stuff. If we don’t have it on tap we’ve got a good selection of cans too from local breweries, so we try to support the local brewers as much as we can. There are so many local brewers, it’s silly to think of having them all! On Wednesdays we have for one hour, from 7 until 8pm, you an come in and some of those rare whiskies and stuff just to get a taste of them. We do them for half-price for one hour. We have an extra-rare Crown Royal, we have 20-year old Director’s Cutfrom Pendleton, Don Julio 1942; just a real large variety of middle to upper-end whiskies and different tequilas.
Q: So you have a steady flow of music in here?
A: Definitely. Karaoke; we’ve got our own sound system now and an on-demand karaoke system, so if there’s two people in here and they want to sing karaoke they can ask the bartender and he can turn it on. We have our baby grand player piano that plays off of iTunes, so people can come in and if they’re good piano players I’ll let them sit at it. If they want to just slam on the thing I don’t let them! So we’re just trying to open the door for the arts a bit.
A big thing that my wife and I talked about when we did this is that we really wanted to have a place for the young kids to come in.That was another reason to introduce the food, because that makes it so you can check off on your license as a restaurant and the kids can come in. I think that window of time when you’re sixteen years old until the time you get out of high school brings out a lot of talent that goes to the wayside because you get caught in life, so that’s one of our goals is to have a venue where the young artists can come in, they have a place that they’re welcome to come in with their guitar and open it, or with a four-piece band or a five-piece band and come in here and get a taste of what it’s like to play for people; and expose them. Adding exposure will keep them playing. That’s a huge deal.
Q: With the music and everything, I think you’ve been getting people from all over and not just Kuna?
A: Oh, yeah! They come from Boise, we’ve had from Nashville Crimson Calamity, they were fantastic. A couple of gals came in, they were on tour running through town and they came in and did a show for us. We’re getting more and more recognized, it takes some time for people to know it’s available for them.
Q: This is not exactly a strip-mall location, this is a special place you have here……
A: Definitely! It was built in 1910; the building has been a lot of things. Originally it was built to be a hardware store and then Teepee Toppers was in here, they were manufacturing toppers in here. The building next door that is Grandpa’s Attic, there used to be behind my walk-in cooler that I built, there used to be an opening. They’d wheel the toppers back and forth between. At one time, when telephones first came to Kuna, upstairs was where the operator was, up on top here. There’s a lot of remarkable history with the building.
When my wife and I went to remodel and restore the building, we kept that in mind that we wanted to keep everything that had to do something with the Valley. So our bar top is one of the main beams from Jackson Elementary down in Boise and the same with the toe-kick. The maple flooring came from Kuna High School, from the hallways and classrooms, so that’s all reclaimed.The tap tower I built—when I welded that up, it was made from all scrap from Simplot, one of their old potato boilers. The same with the liquor cabinets, that’s all scrap that came from Boise and the Valley.
Q: Marisol, what are your thoughts about Big Mic’s in Kuna?
A: All I was going to share with you is that for people who don’t love that really deep, smoky flavor, these guys have the smoke down right. I myself don’t enjoy a real smoky strong flavor and I love everything on the menu. First, I loved the Bagel Burger— I thought, this is it. Then I tasted his brisket and I can’t believe I love it! Then to the ribs, then to the BLT and the chicken. For people, it’s good to know that they shouldn’t turn away from the smokehouse barbeque just because it’s smoked meat or chicken or brisket. The flavor is not too intense and it’s really just right. We had somebody in here the other day, kind of a ‘local celebrity’ I’ll call her; and she was having that same conversation with me that she doesn’t really enjoy that really intense flavor. After having our food, she was very impressed and told Big Mike that it was really good! I think that’s pretty important.
Q: Big Mike, so what about the chicken?
A:The chicken is unbelievable . As soon as that juice turns clear—when we put that thermometer in it squirts you in the face!
Q: Marisol, do you agree?
A: It’s true, he brought me some chicken the other night and I had to call him and tell him “this is so good, don’t change a thing!”. That’s how good it is, I was really excited. That’s it, in a nutshell—they got it right!
Q: Big Mike, what’s out back of Big Mic’s in Kuna?
A: The reason that the barbeque shack is behind the hardware store is that we set up tables so the kids can come order and eat and have a place to sit down and enjoy it because you have to be 21 to be in here.
(Marisol) For people with families, it’s important for them to know that we offer tea, sweetened and unsweetened, pop, root beer, cranberry juice and dirty sodas; and we do have some beverages for people that do not—I don’t want them to have the impression that it’s strictly alcohol because we have non-alcoholic beverages too. For families, it’s important for them to know too that we have the little picnic table area in the back where people under 21 can come in and enjoy their meals together. We do get a lot of inquiries about that and instead of saying that we can’t, we can bring people in and they can enjoy that as a family together.
Q: You’ve been involved with the community now. How’s the community been with you?
A: The community is remarkable around here really, a breath of fresh air. Really well received—Kuna needed something where everyone felt welcome, like Cheers when they walk in the door. Just a place to relax, a good clean non-smoking place to relax and listen to music. Now with the barbeque, it’s a place to eat and gather; and so as we go we’re filling more and more seeds of things for different people to do. We have a Paint Night in the winter so we try to do as many things as we can. We’ve done a couple of art galleries and let local artists come in. We’ve got our chalkboard walls, we let artists come in and draw on those. We’re trying to cater to music and the arts, that’s the foundation of where we started and what we wanted to do.
We invite anybody that comes here, if they don’t want to come in here and eat barbeque, to order from Enrique’s or order from the Redeye or order from Pizza Hut—any place in town, if they want it delivered here they can sit down at our tables and eat the food that they want to eat. They’re always welcome to do that—I think it’s a good community thing to do.
(Marisol) Our friendly neighbors are grateful for that. We had one of the locals in here from across the street and he said, “You guys provide us with a lot of business from over here”. I said, “What are you going to do when you go down the road” and he said, “we’ll still do it!”. That’s Enrique’s! They’re very grateful with that across-the-street partnership that we have.
(Big Mike) We have a coffee shop that’s one door down also, if someone wants to get a coffee and bring it here and get a shot of [Crown Royal] XR in it or something we offer that to people too. We’re just supporting the whole community.
Q: Thanks Big Mike and Marisol and that’s great ‘que! We’ll be seeing you at Big Mic’s in Kuna!
A few days before this interview, Jake Leg played a show at Big Mic’s in Kuna. It was a good time to try some of the smoked brisket. The brisket was nicely cooked and very flavorful. The smoke was nice, accenting the flavor but not overpowering the special rub they make in-house. Uniquely, it was served on a bagel, giving a nice chewy counterpoint to the tender brisket. On the side, the thick sliced ‘Taters’ were very flavorful and a nice accompaniment to the brisket. Overall, this was really good barbeque—giving a reason to return again just to try the ribs, pulled pork and chicken. On the menu at Big Mic’s in Kuna also is a smoked hot dog, either available just on a bun or with chili, cheese and other goodies. Steak and a signature Smoke House Bagel Burger round out the menu.
Having been to Big Mic’s several times since they opened and enjoying music groups like local blues rockers Jake Leg there, it is nice to see how Big Mic’s in Kuna has progressed and excited about what the future holds, such as plans to expand the food offerings and add a full sit-down dining room. From the first time The Boise Beat wrote about them, Big Mic’s in Kuna has shown that great barbeque, great music, great service and a sense of community are well worth the short drive to Kuna for.
Big Mic’s BBQ
459 West Main Street
Kuna, ID 83634
(208) 922-9494
