Out to Eat: 'Fat Shack' offers gourmet junk food
“Fat Shack,” I declared.
My friends weren’t sure if this was an insult or a genuine suggestion as to where I wanted to eat. It was 9 p.m., and we had just seen “The Mario Galaxy Movie” at the east side Cinemark. I was the one driving the carpool, so it was left up to me to decide.
Though its name sounds like a playground bully’s insult, my friends agreed to try the restaurant out. I heard about it from a relative and found the concept — a sit-down restaurant that serves sub sandwiches stuffed with deep-fried junk food — interesting enough to be worth a try with friends.
Located in the 8th & Railroad Center in downtown Sioux Falls, Fat Shack was relatively easy to find but more difficult to reach. I think I spent more time trying to navigate the maze of the city’s downtown area than I spent at the restaurant itself. Nonetheless, we arrived despite the city’s attempts to stop us.
The vibe of the restaurant is difficult to describe, but it sort of felt like a suspicious warehouse. Each wall was made of old brick, and orders were taken on a surgical-metal counter. Behind that counter, a view of the kitchen demonstrated the excessive elbow grease required to pack mozzarella sticks, french fries and other deep-fried delicacies into a wrapped sub sandwich. After witnessing this honorable work, I simply couldn’t wait to sink my teeth into one.
My friends all avoided the main menu items — the subs, each given a name with the word “Fat” attached to it — and instead opted for smaller, more familiar foods like chicken wings and shakes. I decided on the “Fat Doobie,” the sandwich with one of the longest lists of foods packed inside according to the menu.
The wait time for the food wasn’t very long, though I could tell something about the Shack was making my friends unusually antsy. I think something about the general atmosphere of the place — serving food that is inedible to half of the population, everyone who doesn’t really like junk food — had an upsetting aura about it.
Indeed, the dense sandwich the employee heaved in front of me had an initially off-putting look to it. The grease from the goods inside had already soaked through the wrapping, and the fried foods blended together into an ominous beige color swatch.
This $14 sandwich is probably not peak sustenance for the average person — more a food for the sort of people who enjoy putting fries between their hamburger buns. I, however, found the “Doobie” very tasty, though watching me scarf it down was a sight my friends were unlucky to witness.
Drenched in honey mustard and packed so full of onion rings, fries, mozzarella sticks and chicken tenders that it had become an unrecognizable mass of grease and breading, it wasn’t necessarily the most visually appealing.
While at first it seemed like the items inside were just there for the sake of creating some kind of monster sandwich, the sub proved to be a calculated culinary effort. Each ingredient complimented the others, and I found the generous amount of sauce paired well with everything else.
I’d recommend Fat Shack to anybody who enjoys deep-fried foods in dense packages. I know I’ll come back here whenever I’m in the mood for semi-frightening junk food, though likely on a solo trip next time. In the time it took me to down that caloric “Doobie” beast, my friends had made plenty of jokes at my expense: “My cholesterol is rising just looking at that thing,” they said. “I can already feel the acne forming on my face, watching you eat that.”
Maybe bringing friends to Fat Shack wasn’t my finest idea — but come on, at least a little of the blame is on them. It’s not like I told them we were going to the Balanced Diet Shack.
