Big Al’s celebrates 50th anniversary

By Michael Sudhalter

When Lauran Weiner was honored as Restaurateur of The Year by the Greater Dallas Chapter of the Texas Restaurant Association this summer, she was surprised and humbled by the prestigious honor.

“I’m overwhelmed and still floored by it,” said Weiner, the second-generation owner of Big Al’s Smokehouse BBQ at 3317 Inwood Road in Dallas. “My team deserves it. I feel like I’m the face and they’re the heart.”

Weiner’s team includes Pitmaster Pedro Garcia, who’s been with Big Al’s since 1979; General Manager Jonathan McZeal; and a staff of 16 employees plus contract workers. In addition to the restaurant, Big Al’s has a vibrant catering business.

“Pedro is the heart of our house,” Weiner said. “We’re all family. I’ve known Pedro since I was a child. Jonathan is a renaissance man — he takes care of everyone. He’s just everything for us.”

Greater Dallas represents one of 20 Texas Restaurant Association chapters in the state; only about a third of the winners are female.

“Being a woman-owned and family-owned barbecue restaurant definitely (makes us) a unicorn — I know a couple of them but not many,” Weiner said.

It’s fitting that Big Al’s, which has earned a slew of awards over the past five decades, is receiving one of the industry’s top honors during its 50th anniversary.

Weiner is inspired by her father, the late great Alvin “Big Al” Plaskoff, who founded Big Al’s on Inwood Road in 1974. She knows just how proud her father would be of this accomplishment, for which restaurants are anonymously nominated.

“Doing barbecue in Dallas is a challenge; keeping it alive this long and keeping us thriving this long (is special),” Weiner said. “We’re still here. We have this legacy and we’re proud of it.”

Weiner was hanging out and before long, helping out, at the family restaurant, well before she earned a driver’s license.

She made her own path, though, graduating from The Greenhill School and The University of Texas at Austin, and then, moving to Michigan. Her father would freeze and ship barbecue to her.

Weiner’s Detroit friends raved about it to the point they encouraged her to open a BBQ spot in the Upper Midwest.

She didn’t, but she stayed involved with Big Al’s by doing marketing, public relations, website work and holiday sales — above and beyond her own career as an entertainment promoter.

When Plaskoff became ill in the early 2010s, Weiner knew it was time to step up and return to Dallas to run Big Al’s.

“Somebody had to be here,” Weiner said.

Plaskoff passed away in 2018 at age 74; an important part of his legacy was the way he cared about and treated his staff. Weiner embodied that character trait in 2020 when the COVID-19 pandemic rattled the world, but specifically the restaurant and service sectors.

“We didn’t shut down,” Weiner said. “We served the testing sites and later, the vaccination sites for the City of Dallas. Our people were working — even though they didn’t get the same hours. Every week, we’d make family meals for the staff. Everybody who came in to work had food to take home for their families.”

Weiner didn’t take a paycheck for two years during COVID-19, but she was able to keep her staff and business intact. She said her father instilled the sense of duty to help others.

“I was very close with my dad — I worked with him every day for many, many years,” Weiner said. “The values we learned are to help people when you can.”

Weiner, who grew up attending Temple Emanu-El and participating in BBYO, is proud of her ties and Big Al’s Barbecue’s ties to the local Jewish community.

She has “kosher-ized” meals, including the times when she catered the Maccabi Games in Dallas in 2005 and 2015. Weiner has catered meals for Temple Emanu-El and Temple Shalom over the years.

Now, Weiner is the proud mother of two teenage volleyball players, Chloe and Sophie. As members of Team Dallas’ 16-U volleyball squad, the girls just won the gold medal at the Maccabi Games in Houston.

Weiner is a fourth-generation Dallasite on her mother’s side. Her parents regularly hosted large parties, as well as large gatherings on Rosh Hashanah and Passover.

Plaskoff grew up in Miami, hardly a hotbed for barbecue. He moved to Dallas in the 1960s and married Harriet Rosenthal in 1966.

Plaskoff went to work for his father-in-law, Harry Rosenthal, who owned Farmer’s Meat Market in downtown Dallas. Before she was in kindergarten, Weiner learned how to make change at the cash register at her grandfather’s market.

Plaskoff knew that he wanted to start his own business and learned from some of the city’s top pitmasters, including Red Bryan (father of Sonny Bryan) and the Moore Brothers.

He started with brisket and became well-known for his smoked beef ribs, while the other BBQ leaders of the day were specializing in other areas.

At one point, Plaskoff owned as many as six restaurants.

“He wasn’t competing with his mentors, and (his mentors) taught him everything,” Weiner said.

Earlier this year, Big Al’s has held a couple of fun events to celebrate its semicentennial anniversary, which included a proclamation from the Dallas City Council.

Barbecue can be trendy, especially in the age of social media, but Weiner said Big Al’s is committed to making authentic, traditional barbecue that their customers have come to know and love.

That’s not to say Weiner and her staff don’t introduce new items to the menu. They do, and more recently, they added a margarita as well as a spiked ice tea.

She’s especially proud of “Pedro’s brisket chili,” which the pitmaster created.

“You have a chance to talk to the people making your food. You don’t see that in many places anymore,” Weiner said.