Big Cheese co-founder fed UM football stars, The Rock, Ali — and he had the secret sauce
South Florida foodies and college football fans mourn the loss of Bill Archer, the co-founder of South Miami’s The Big Cheese with his childhood buddy Garry Duell Jr.
Archer, born in Miami on Nov. 2, 1959, died Feb. 21 at 65 after a series of medical complications culminating in adrenal failure, Duell said.
The lifelong friends’ casual Italian restaurant — and its backstory and wall of fame photos featuring big name customers like The Rock, Muhammad Ali, Dan Marino and former University of Miami Olympic diver Greg Louganis — is a community treasure.
The Big Cheese is a South Florida original — like Frankie’s Pizza and Arbetter Hot Dogs in Westchester and Jaxson’s in Dania Beach, family-run places around for decades.
KNOW MORE: Remember when old South Florida restaurants looked like this? You can still eat there
A Miami survivor
“I just love fixtures and they seem to be fading,” said University of Miami law school adjunct professor David Heffernan.
As a Columbus High School senior in 1980, Heffernan, now 62, won the Miami Herald’s Silver Knight award in athletics. He was a part of the Hurricanes offensive line in 1983 that protected quarterback Bernie Kosar during UM’s first national championship season under Coach Howard Schnellenberger.
“This is my hometown,” Heffernan said. “Jimbo’s out on Key Biscayne is gone. Tobacco Road. All these places that were just iconic. Big Cheese is right in that realm of the food track of my younger years and my older years.”
Heffernan loves Archer’s eggplant dishes, he says. Pizza, too.
“You want those places to hang around,” he said. “I’ve got two little grandkids now. I want to take them to Big Cheese once they’re ready to start eating pizza because that’s where I took my kids. It’s Miami.”
The Big Cheese is so intertwined with nearby UM students, athletes and coaches it could serve as an off-site classroom to teach a winning brand of culinary arts and hospitality.
Big Cheese wall of fame
Framed photos of “Big Cheeses” line the restaurant, including UM star athletes like football player turned wrestler turned movie star Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson. He signed the poster for his 2007 Disney film, “The Game Plan,” and it hangs in the back dining room.
UM coaches including football’s just-retired Jimmy Johnson, who donated a helmet, Dennis Erickson and the late Schnellenberger and baseball’s Ron Fraser are enshrined here.
There’s a photo of The U’s Hall of Fame swimming coach Bill Diaz chatting at a table with Fraser and Los Angeles Dodgers manager Tommy Lasorda.
And over there, it’s UMiami’s current head football coach Mario Cristobal, a Class of ‘88 Columbus grad.
They all ate and talked strategy from The Big Cheese’s red Formica booths over affordable yet plentiful Italian food.
READ MORE: University of Miami Swimming Hall of Fame Coach Bill Diaz dies at 89.
Lasorda would come in for lunch when he was in town: Spaghetti and meat sauce with a meatball. “He ate the whole thing,” Duell said. “Ron Fraser loved Billy.”
Muhammad Ali signed a photo of himself wearing a black Big Cheese cap inside the restaurant. The image hangs here, too. It perches above the “Sonny Hirsch Northwest 14th Ave.” street sign, named for the Voice of the Hurricanes announcer for 28 seasons and former Miami Orioles general manager.
You’ll see a signed Sports Illustrated “Super Shoot-Out” cover from Jan. 27, 1985, featuring former Miami Dolphins QB Dan Marino and 49er Joe Montana up there in the comfort-food temple Archer and Duell built.
Indianapolis Colts and Denver Broncos quarterback Peyton Manning’s picture hangs here, too. He visited The Big Cheese with members of the Dolphins, Duell said. Customers like humorist and former Miami Herald columnist Dave Barry is also a framed “big cheese” near the pick-up window.
The Big Cheese fueled some national gridiron champions, too.
“They’re just family to us,” said one of them, Melvin Bratton, of Archer and Duell. “They are the U, alright? They are the U, period. That’s how we look at that,” the former Miami Northwestern High and UM Hurricane running back said. Bratton started with the Canes in 1983, just before The Big Cheese opened on Ludlam Road off U.S. 1, three miles from UM’s athletic field in Coral Gables.
Highsmith and Bratton feed a comeback
When Bratton, 60, blew out his knee inside the Orange Bowl during UM’s January 1988 championship game, his comeback trail was directed by his former UM teammate Alonzo Highsmith, then a fullback rookie with the NFL’s Houston Oilers.
They’d train together at Tropical Park during Highsmith’s visits home to Miami. Highsmith, Bratton recalls, told him, “Nutrition-wise, you gotta eat better. We gotta find a place where you can get more carbs, the pastas, healthy stuff like that. Protein.”
Bratton and Highsmith came upon The Big Cheese a few miles down the road in its original space — a 12-seat restaurant on Ludlam Road across the street from its current location since 1991 at 8080 SW 67th Ave.
When the two UM stars walked in, Archer’s eyes grew as big as one of his plates of steaming spaghetti.
“Billy was in awe. You’d have thought Elvis Presley had walked in the building,” Bratton said, laughing.
Archer came up with a menu plan for the two football players.
“We were like, ‘Damn! This food is excellent,” Bratton said. “After the third time, we went back to the locker room and started bragging, telling everybody we found the spot. We got Jerome Brown to go. All the boys. Brian Blades. George Mira Jr. Bill Hawkins. You name it. We bragged about the pizza because on Cheat Day we got the pizza. Before we knew it all the players started going there,” Bratton said.
“Bill was awesome to us,” Highsmith said. “We just all became good friends. He was like a homeboy from home and he always treated me and Melvin like family.”
Big Cheese extended family
Bratton and Highsmith’s framed photos were the first two Archer hung to begin his Big Cheese wall of fame.
“We kept the generations going and letting the young guys know this is family,” Bratton said. “So when they come in and see the wall of fame and see the pictures of Eddie Brown, they see Jerome Brown on the wall, seeing how it has grown. I laugh now because I see all these coaches and Jimmy Johnson, Dennis Erickson, all these guys.
“I say, ‘Damn Billy, you came a long way from two little Black guys from the city, from Miami, and here it is now,” said Bratton, who visited Archer at the restaurant often from his home in Atlanta. “You got a wall of fame and bro, I thank you. You and Alonzo started this for me.’ He’d get teared up every single time. He was so thankful to us but it was like God put us together.”
An NFL New England Patriots executive, Highsmith, 60, said he tells his football players when they go to Miami they should swing by The Big Cheese.
“People would tell me when they went to Big Cheese, ‘I saw your picture on the wall.’ So I took a lot of pride. And two things I took a lot of pride in are the University of Miami and Big Cheese,” Highsmith said.
Press the Columbus Class of ‘83 grad and Dade County Athlete of the Year a bit and he’ll add a couple personal Miami monuments.
“Columbus. Arbetters. University of Miami and The Big Cheese — those four,” Highsmith said.
As high intensity athletes and their coaches know, carb- and protein-loading can give them the fuel they need to perform on the playing field.
“I went to UM at 208 pounds. And I think I graduated about 265 or so. I’m sure, in large part, because of The Big Cheese,” Heffernan joked.
He feasted on Archer’s hubcap-sized plates of baked steaming spaghetti, garlic rolls dripping with oil and spices, and creamy side Caesar salads and pungent pepperoni pizzas swaddled in rich Wisconsin mozzarella.
“Many times our ingredients are the same as you find in the most expensive Italian restaurants,” Archer told the Miami Herald in a 2002 interview. “We can afford that for one reason: volume.”
Bill Archer’s menu
Archer’s wit is smothered all over Big Cheese’s menu. In addition to being the mastermind chef of The Big Cheese’s offerings, he wrote the conversational folksy messages on the menu, Duell said.
▪ Lasagna: $18.50 - bill’s special pride! you never had it so good!
▪ The Big Cheese Hawaiian specialty pizza: sweet duck sauce, topped with mozzarella, pineapple, canadian bacon, and coconut shavings. bill stole this one from sausalito, california in 1979. (no tomato sauce in this one folks)
▪ Stuffed Spinach Shells: $17.95 - pasta shells stuffed with spinach and ricotta cheese, baked with tomato sauce and mozzarella. you’ll like it.
▪ Walter Special K.C.B. (Keep Coming Back): $13.95 - side spaghetti with fresh mushrooms, topped with three pieces of grilled chicken breast, named after one of our favorite customers!
▪ The Miami Slice: this pizza consists of sweet baked ham, creamy ricotta cheese and pineapple topped with cinnamon. try it, if it’s for you. it’s great!
▪ Art Kehoe Atkin Special: $18.50 - grilled chicken, meatballs, sausage, meat sauce with cheese melted over the top. The dish is named for the five-time Hurricanes national championship offensive line coach.
The Miami-born Archer was an avid Florida Keys fisherman, boater and skin diver since childhood, hence his array of seafood pasta dishes on the menu like pink shrimp pasta (marked “garry’s favorite!”) and bowls of his hearty New England clam chowder.
How the owners met
Duell, Archer’s best friend, business partner, his “brother from another mother,” met an 8-year-old Bill Bruce Archer when he was 11. Duell’s family moved onto a lot on the block of Sunset Drive and 82nd Court in the late 1960s. The Duells were driving down the street scouting properties when Garry, looking out the family car’s window, noticed a kid following their car in a go-kart. “This is cool,” Duell thought. The family stopped at a lot where their house would soon be built.
“We’re looking at the lawn and we said we’re going to build a house there,” Duell said. “And it was Billy and he said, ‘Oh, you guys are gonna move here? Oh, great. We could use some people in the neighborhood.’
“He was only 8 or 9 years old but he was a big kid. At 9, he was as big as I was. And he goes, ‘You want to ride my go-kart?’ So I rode his go-kart up the street. And while my dad was looking at the contractor stuff and at the plans we just hit it off right there because of the go-kart,” Duell said.
To fund his own go-kart, the kids started a lawn-mowing business on their block. Ran seasonal mango and avocado stands.
“We made enough money that summer; I think I made $120. Billy and I couldn’t wait to get home from school just to go put our helmets on and go ride our go-karts,” Duell said.
The best buddies soon practiced football together. Archer played for his Miami Killian High team. Archer’s father took them scuba diving in the Keys. Lobstering. Hunting hog fish. Boating.
Duell’s grandmother Helen Simonetti was Italian. A young Archer watched transfixed as she’d make her meatballs and spaghetti sauce.
“He loved cooking,” Duell said.
Grandma Simonetti taught Archer, the eager food student, what she knew. You’re tasting that now via Big Cheese menu items like Bill’s special pride lasagna. Archer moved to California to study at The College of Marin and worked at a local pizzeria in San Francisco.
By 1980, Archer was back in Miami, working at Poopsie’s Pizza on Ludlam near U.S. 1 in the space now occupied by Wall’s Ice Cream. In November 1983 when he overheard owners saying they were going to move farther south to avoid the rent increase on their tiny space, Archer rushed to tell Duell of an opportunity. They could take on the lease and open their own Italian restaurant if they could convince the skeptical Texan landlord with the commanding presence who also owned the adjacent Tom Thumb gas station convenience store that these two men in their mid-20s had a viable business plan.
They did. By February 1984 the original 12-seat Big Cheese opened in a tiny wedge-shaped building.
“We had $63 in the bank,” Archer told the Miami Herald on The Big Cheese’s first anniversary in 1985, “and we used it to make change for the cash register. Things were really tough for the first six months. We had a lot of close calls, but everything worked out and now we’re doing a great business.”
When they opened the small Big Cheese, they were across the street from the WINZ-940 AM studios where talk show host Neil Rogers held court.
“Billy would make up a pizza and we’d bring it over,” Duell said. When he’d walk it into the lobby the receptionist told him the jocks were on the air, but Duell persisted and made sure Rogers could see The Big Cheese logo on the box.
Duell says Rogers would announce, on the air: ‘Oh, The Big Cheese people are here. They brought us a pizza. Oh my God, this is good.’
“It was free advertising,” Duell chuckles.
The former WINZ is now a chiropractors’ clinic and is next door to the current and larger 100-plus seat Big Cheese that the duo upgraded to in April 1991 after spending $300,000 to renovate the building and bring it to code.
“The restaurant was a byproduct of our friendship. My believing in him,” said Duell, who has had a long, and continuing, career in custom publishing, a role he maintains with his behind-the-scenes responsibilities as a Big Cheese co-owner. “I knew he was so good at making pizza and running recipes and knowing how to do it. Our partnership was outstanding. And we never had one argument.”
Future plans
Duell, 68, makes it clear to Big Cheese fans what he told his assembled staffers — seasoned veterans and high schoolers, alike — at the restaurant after they lost his business partner:
“After he died, I said, ‘Listen guys, we’re continuing onward in Billy’s name. A little piece of Bill is it all of you. And he would want us to continue. And I’m going to continue. And you’re his legacy. You’re the legacy. So keep serving the people and the public as we always have.’ And we’ll keep going, baby. I have no intentions of letting it go.”
A Big Cheese secret
Duell will cue you in on the “secret sauce” — beyond the steady repeat customers, famous and regular Miami folk, alike — that fuels The Big Cheese’s more than 40-year and counting hold on South Florida’s collective appetites:
Leftovers are not a dirty word at The Big Cheese.
“One of our secrets is that all our sauces, and all the things we make — the meatballs in the meat sauce, and all that stuff — is made the day before and then put into the refrigerator for the night. Then the next morning that’s what you have the next day,” Duell said of his business partner’s scientifically savvy kitchen plan.
“That’s why it tastes so good. Because it’s really like the same thing that you do at home when you put it away. It tastes better the next day. That is what we do.”
Services Big Cheese style
Archer’s survivors include his wife, Roxanne; daughters Skylar, Alex and Sammy; grandson Lucas; and his brother Jim.
A Celebration of Life will be 1 p.m. Friday, March 14, at Christ the King Lutheran Church, 11295 SW 57th Ave. in Miami-Dade.
The Big Cheese plans to serve pizza slices with a side of its Caesar salad to guests at the close of the ceremony.
Miami Herald staff writer Howard Cohen, a Hurricane Aquatics swimmer and UM adjunct professor, has fueled many meets on The Big Cheese’s baked spaghetti.
This story was originally published March 6, 2025 at 9:55 AM.
