punkerque: Fat Buddies BBQ

Fat Buddies BBQ

Friday, July 20, 2007

If find it really strange that while most resturants have names that do everything to hide the fact that you will actually be consuming food (and probably food that is not good for you), BBQ joints go out of their way to remind you that you are going to eat PIG. As someone once said, "pork fat rules!"

Punkerdoo and I had to head to Ohio to attend cousinofpunkerdoo's Big Fat Greek Wedding (no relation to the aforementioned fat pig.) We had just purchased a Mio C220 so we thought it might be fun to drive by a completely ridiculous route just to piss off the GPS. We decided to call our GPS "Guy" (Think French..Ghee).

We were going north on 441 and wanted to do whatever was necessary to keep from driving through the Park and into Gatlinburg. When we hit Franklin, NC we decide to have lunch. We asked Guy about where to eat some Q and he started spouting directions that led us through some residential section of town, down what looked like an alley and suddenly we were in the back lot of a strip mall. About the time Guy said, "you have arrived", we saw the sign for Fat Buddies. Guy rules!

Anyway, being the suspicious and doubting type, I try to avoid stipmalls in practice and stripmall BBQ on ethics. However, we were here and we were hungry, so we went in. The place is big and was very busy. We noticed when walking up that there was no tell-tale scent of hickory or oak in the air, so my alarm bells were going off.

We were seated immediatley and looked at the menu. This place has many things other than Q, but they also seemed centered around ribs (as if the t-shirts stating "I sucked bones at Fat Buddies" didn't give that away). They did have several options on "smoke cooked pork" so we went for the standard pork plate (.50 extra for pulled rather than chopped)

Husband had pork plate with slaw and potato salad (no stew on menu)
Punkerdoo has pork plate with fries and potato salad

HEY! The meat tasted like smoke cooked pork. Wood cooked BBQ that actually has some essence of smoke in it! Weird. Then I remembered that we noticed no signs of a pit. Maybe this Q was cooked in an oven that had a sawdust smoker attached..... The purist in me hopes not, but damn the meat was proper.

At any rate, give Fat Buddies a try, they have 3 locations.

Ambiance rating: 3 Squealers