Restaurant
Williamsburg, Greenpoint
Fette Sau
Not since the original Long Island City Pearson’s, perhaps, has a location been as ideally suited for barbecue as Williamsburg’s Fette Sau (“fat pig” in German). Kim and Joe Carroll, owners of the inimitable beer bar Spuyten Duyvil, had been scouting locations for their second venture when they learned that Tony & Sons, the auto-body repair shop across the street, was renting out part of its fenced-in lot and cinderblock building. The couple preserved the shop’s industrial vibe, outfitting the driveway with picnic tables and the wood-beamed, cement-floored interior with phonograph-horn light fixtures and stools fashioned from John Deere tractor seats. The centerpiece, though, is the Southern Pride gas-and-wood-fired smoker capable of slow-cooking 500 pounds of meat at a time. An avid backyard barbecuer, Joe eschews regional styles, finding inspiration in local ingredients like Italian fennel sausage from a nearby butcher, and his own proprietary panela-and-espresso-based spice rub. Head chef Matt Lang, late of Pearl Oyster Bar, swaps surf for turf with a rotating menu of pork and beef ribs and shoulders, pigs’ tails, flank steak, leg of lamb, pork belly, and pastrami, all sold by weight and served on butcher paper, sauce on the side. The drink list is appropriately heavy on North american bourbon and whiskey, with a smattering of tequilas, mescals, rums, and vodkas, and of the ten tap beers, four are custom-brewed by New Jersey’s Heavyweight and Brooklyn’s own Greenpoint. — Robin Raisfeld and Rob Patronite
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