Fatz+Cafe=Greatness

All I had heard about Fatz Café was that it is an excellent restaurant with great variety and the food was excellent no matter what was ordered. In fact, I had only heard the best of reviews for Fatz Cafe. With all the things I have learned about food and reviewing it in the past few weeks the fact that Fatz Cafe could be that good did not seem the least bit possible to me. I almost managed to convince myself that I should review Fatz Cafe just so that I could give it a bad review. However, in the end I decided to review Fatz Café as myself, an unassuming college student on a limited budget who enjoys a nice meal with the family.

When I first walked into Fatz Café I immediately fell prey to confusion. There were no instructions! The “please wait to be seated” sign that is a staple at most restaurants was absent. There was no smiling host or hostess to patiently herd us to our seats. There was no guest book to sign. There was no indication whatsoever as to the correct method of being seated. After a couple minutes a few waitresses had walked by, but they paid us no attention and kept moving. Just when I had given up and had begun the task of finding a booth, a young man walks up, lazily asks how many were with our party, checks the table chart, and signals for us to follow him. We had finally gotten some service after five minutes of awkwardly standing in the doorway.

The host had no idea what he was doing. He had checked the table chart before he signaled for us to follow, but we only made it about three feet before he had to turn around and check the chart again. He mumbled an apology and led us to a table that could seat at least twenty people. Needless to say, it was grossly oversized for my party of three. He again mumbled an apology, but at this point it was a futile gesture as judgment had already been passed. When he finally managed to find the right booth and revealed that he was not going to our waiter I could not help feeling overjoyed. I had always heard Fatz Café had great food, but I had never heard anything about its service. Considering my experience up to this point that amazed me because many of my friends had eaten at Fatz before and I am sure that they would have warned me of the service if their experience was anything remotely close to the debacle that was the seating process. With this thought in mind I awaited the arrival of my waiter or waitress, and could not help but seriously consider the possibility of giving Fatz Café the first negative rating in the history of the world.

As fate would have it, from the moment my waitress arrived Fatz Café’s service was above average. Nikki, our waitress, is without a doubt the most jovial waitress I have had the pleasure of knowing. In fact, her smiling, bubbling exterior was almost enough that I never realized her unyielding professionalism. She did mess up our drink order by bringing unsweet tea instead of sweet tea, but as soon as I brought it to her attention she righted the wrong with a smile and a sincere apology. Other than that single mistake her service was impeccable. There was never any need to ask for a refill. It was as if Nikki had a sixth sense and knew when our glasses were close to empty. She also brought out some of Fatz Café’s poppy seed rolls with cinnamon butter. These rolls were amazing. When I first bit into one it tasted like a normal roll, but after chewing it for awhile the roll actually began to taste like a donut. She had even managed to perfect a skill only reached by the best waiters and waitress; she could take our orders without any kind of notes. This may have been the source of her error. However, since she corrected her mistake without incident one can hardly hold her at fault for a mistake that is most likely a simple misunderstanding. Nikki is an exemplary waitress, and she is good for a laugh or two as well.
The service may not have been excellent, but the food definitely was up to par. As I first glanced through the menu I noticed that Fatz had just about anything a person could want. The menu was divided into sections; first was salads and appetizers, then chicken and pastas, followed by beef and ribs, then burgers and sandwiches, and finally seafood and desserts. Now many restaurants I have eaten at have their menu organized in a similar manner, but only the best had enough options in the sections to be able to devote a full page of the menu to just that type of food. Fatz Café had more than enough options to fill a complete page. But out of all those food selections one thing caught my attention, Fatz Café’s “World Famous Calabash Chicken.” The menu stated the Calabash is a coastal town in North Carolina that is known for its lightly breaded, heavily seasoned fried fish, and Fatz had merely applied that philosophy to chicken. My mind was made up, and when Nikki brought the sample tenders it only made my decision that much easier.

I ordered that “World Famous Calabash Chicken” with a side of mashed potatoes and the house salad. The salad was simply the best salad I have ever eaten in my entire life. The lettuce was fresh, the cherry tomatoes were fresh, the carrots were fresh; there was not a single part of that salad that was not fresh. But the one factor that sets the salad above all others is Fatz Café’s salad uses real bacon. That fresh bacon taste is a perfect complement to the sweetness of the cherry tomatoes. I am not exaggerating when I say that salad ruined me for other salads. The mashed potatoes were truly a unique spin on mashed potatoes. At first it looks like a plain serving of mashed potatoes, but as soon as it touched my tongue I knew it was anything but ordinary. From what my unassuming palette could taste there was some sort of cheese and what appeared to be a hint of ranch mixed in with the potatoes. These mixed to create a truly unique mashed potato experience. As far as the chicken is concerned, if it is not world famous, it soon will be. They were not the least bit greasy, as is the case with most chicken tenders. They were not the gargantuan, steroid infused tenders either, but rather I could down just about almost every tender in two small bites. True to their name, they were indeed lightly breaded. They were not, however, heavily seasoned. In fact I could taste no seasoning whatsoever. I was confused, but it made no difference to me because the tenders taste so well that they really required no seasoning. Fatz Café’s food more than made up for its less than stellar service.

My time at Fatz Café was an experience that demonstrated the best and worst it had to offer. I got to experience the superb food, but at the same time I experienced the apparent lack of concern for seating patrons. The price of the food was extremely affordable, and was well within even a small budget. In the end, the trouble I had being seated could only slightly diminish the overall quality of my experience.

FATZ’s CAFÉ
Four Stars out of Five Stars