Old Fields Barbecue opens in Huntington
Old Fields Barbecue opened in Huntington Village on May 12, 2017, with a rustic-industrial interior, traditional menu and counter service. Credit: Newsday/Corin Hirsch
Huntington Village gained its second barbecue spot in as many weeks when Old Fields Barbecue opened on New Street last Friday night.
With a carefully considered rustic-industrial interior, traditional menu, and counter service, “it’s a combination between Texas and Brooklyn,” said co-owner David Tunney. Lamps are made from toaster parts and old chicken feeders; a communal table in the back was salvaged from a Patchogue schoolhouse; and some of the “wallpaper” was cobbled together from old wooden food crates. In front of a street-facing garage door sits a 1947 red Schwinn Whizzer. “We gutted the whole building,” said managing partner Rory Van Nostrand of the space, which once housed La Notte.
After sampling barbecue across the country, “from Nashville to Austin,” Tunney and his team (which includes Van Nostrand and longtime chef Israel Castro) decided to keep their menu simple — meats, sides, sauce, and bread — and made-to-order at a pickup counter in the back of the dining room.
The meats include brisket, St. Louis-style pork ribs, smoked chicken, pulled pork, and house-made sausage. “Everything is dry-rubbed and smoked overnight,” said Castro, on a Southern Pride BBQ Smoker in the kitchen. Diners can chose from five sauces as well as a la carte sides that include mac-and-cheese, collard greens, watermelon salad, and mashed sweet potatoes — plus Hawaiian rolls and cornbread for sopping up the juices. For now, peach cobbler is the sole dessert.
Old Fields’ cocktail menu also sticks to the classics, such as a Moscow Mules, a banana-infused Old Fashioned, and a tea-based Dragoon Punch laced with rum and brandy and is based on an 1850s recipe. Six taps deliver rotating beers, though Shiner Bock is a constant, and there are 12 wines by the glass.
The team behind Old Fields Barbecue know each other well: Castro and Van Nostrand have worked with Tunney since he opened the first Old Fields of Greenlawn — which he co-owns with his wife, Christina — in 2010. (Tunney also co-owns Huntington’s Besito with his brother, John Tunney).
Old Fields Barbecue serves dinner seven nights a week from 5 p.m., and lunch service will begin in a few weeks.
Old Fields Barbecue, 15 New St., Huntington, 631-923-1515, ofbarbecue.com
