Photos courtesy of Big Trouble.
Chef Jeremy Noffke, the owner of Big Trouble in Hattiesburg, Mississippi
This may sound like hyperbole, but it is a simple fact that no restaurant that has opened in Hattiesburg, Mississippi this century has done so with more anticipatory buzz than Chef Jeremy Noffke’s Big Trouble.
It began late summer 2023, when construction crews showed up at a long-vacant building along Hardy Street, the city’s main thoroughfare. It had most recently housed a package store. Locals wondered what was coming, with only a single signboard out front to offer a clue: “It’s not an immediate care.”
As construction continued through fall, other messages appeared. “The zoo pays the giraffes to flirt with you.” “Sign up for yodeling classes today.” “Exercising is great! Unless you compare it to not exercising.”
While these missives churned up interest, so did the enigmatic name—“Big Trouble”—that was soon flaunted across the front of the building. There was also the restaurant’s logo—or, more accurately, its mascot—which appeared beside the name one day: a raccoon with a slightly sinister squint holding a baseball bat behind its back. When Big Trouble finally opened in December 2023, its culinary offerings proved commensurate with the intrigue that had swirled around the building for months.
An “(a)typical Asian-American restaurant” is how Big Trouble describes itself. While that’s not wrong, it’s imprecise. When pressed, Chef Noffke said the fare “skews heavily toward Chinese-American cuisine,” but he added that there are other influences, too, and he did so in a tone that suggested trying to define the food would be a fool’s errand.
Big Trouble is like nothing else in Mississippi’s Piney Woods.
He has a point. The menu includes chicken wings dipped in fish sauce caramel. There are various steamed buns options and two kinds of in-house ramen. There is a smash burger. One appetizer is queso dip served with fried “wonton chips.” There is a fried rice dish that includes pork rinds and another designed to taste basically like a Big Mac.
Perhaps our purposes are best served by saying that Big Trouble is like nothing else in Mississippi’s Piney Woods.
Hattiesburg is a fine town for eating out. There are a plethora of locally-owned restaurants, from pub-style eateries and Italian diners, to Greek and Mediterranean joints, to burger spots and New Orleans-inspired seafood places—not to mention the dozens of fish houses outside the city limits, specializing in fried catfish and coleslaw. There is also any chain imaginable. But for a town of roughly 50,000 people that is home to two universities, Hattiesburg’s culinary scene has plenty of space for a homegrown, slightly left-of-center restaurant. You know the type. A place that takes its food and its service very seriously, but not much else.
Images courtesy of Big Trouble
Chef Jeremy Noffke’s, owner of Big Trouble in Hattiesburg, Mississippi
Noffke co-owns Big Trouble with Emily Curry and Dusty Frierson, both of whom have extensive experience in the Hattiesburg restaurant scene. Curry and Frierson worked with Noffke to curate the eclectic interior aesthetic, with various nods to Asian culture coexisting with pieces of Beastie Boys paraphernalia. There are photographs of Angela Lansbury, too. And sometimes the bathroom speakers play the Mad Men theme song. But it is Noffke’s personality and literal taste that are most reflected on Big Trouble’s menu.
At age forty-eight, Noffke is not new to the south Mississippi culinary scene. In fact, Robert St. John, a respected Mississippi restaurateur who has lived and worked in Hattiesburg since the 1980s, called Noffke “the most talented chef in the state.”
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After graduating from a Hattiesburg-area high school in 1994, he went to Tampa, Florida, to pursue his passion for skateboarding. While there, he began working in restaurants. By his early twenties, he was back in Hattiesburg, where he got a job busing tables at St. John’s Crescent City Grill.
Noffke worked for St. John for two decades. Along the way, he attended the Culinary Institute of America, where the erstwhile skater kid learned the methods of the world’s finest cooks. In 2009, back in Hattiesburg, he became chef de cuisine at Purple Parrot Cafe, a position he held for eight years.
In 2017, Noffke moved to the Gulf Coast, where he helped open a restaurant and then worked as a corporate chef. It was a time that did not suit him. In explaining why, he smiled and held up his heavily tattooed arms. He simply felt the environment did not offer enough creative freedom.
So, in 2022, when Southern Prohibition (SoPro), a brewery in downtown Hattiesburg, asked Noffke to help build a food menu, he jumped at the chance. He designed the kitchen from scratch and still to this day serves as the brewery’s taproom chef. Noffke’s sense of irony and culture is evident on the SoPro menu as well. There is the “Obligatory Giant Brewery Pretzel” and “Totino’s Pizza Roll Nachos,” which are “locally sourced from Sam’s.” There is also the “Double Royale With Cheese” and the “Beer-IA Tacos.”
It is this irreverence that shines brightest at Big Trouble. One of the most popular sections on the menu is “Food Court Classics,” which includes orange chicken and beef and broccoli, reminiscent of childhood lunches at shopping malls. The only difference, Noffke pointed out, is that his version is made fresh-to-order and hasn’t spent hours beneath a heat lamp. “No shade to buffets,” he added with surprising sincerity, admitting that he still routinely partakes.
There is also a section on the menu called, “Fancy Plates,” which includes duck (“tea-smoked peking breast”), Norwegian smoked salmon, and Mishima Reserve wagyu flat iron. “I still like to flex every now and then,” Noffke said with the kind of grin only a person who subscribes to both Thrasher and Bon Appetit magazines can pull off.
It’s not just Big Trouble’s menu that is informal. The restaurant’s wait staff suggests that customers pick and choose items at their whim, essentially disregarding typical designations like “Appetizer,” “Entrée,” and “Sides.”
“Choose your own adventure,” said Noffke.
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