Fatboys Southern Smokehouse

Memphis dry-rub ribs, Carolina pulled pork, Texan brisket, an Alabama white sauce on the tacos, Kansas cornbread on the side — the menu at Fatboys Southern Smokehouse reads less like one barbecue style than a route through the American South. The spread is deliberate. Founder Shawn Dawson built the place around a road trip he took on a Harley-Davidson Fatboy, riding through the Carolinas, Tennessee, Alabama, and Georgia to learn how each region smokes its meat, then carried the research home to a corner of Ottawa's ByWard Market. What reaches the table now is that itinerary, cooked low and slow over a Southern Pride smoker and plated for a city a long way from the pit.

The smoked meats are the spine of it. Memphis Dry-Rub Ribs arrive as St. Louis-cut pork ribs rubbed in Fatboy's own blend of spices, smoked until the bark sets and finished on the grill, the sauce left to the side rather than poured over. Around them sit Texan beef brisket, Carolina pulled pork, and Southern fried chicken — the four anchors a first table works through. The clearest way in is a tray. The Kentucky Derby Platter feeds two on Memphis ribs, pulled pork, brisket under gravy, chopped barbecue chicken, a bonus round of fried chicken, Kansas cornbread, and a pair of Southern sides; The Hungry Man hands one person three quarter-pound meats to combine however they like. Starters keep to the same register, from a pound of Louisville-style smoked wings to deep-fried pickles with Alabama white sauce. The sides carry real weight too — smoked bacon mac and cheese, smoked beans folded through with brisket, maple-whipped sweet mash with pecans.

For a kitchen this committed to the pit, Fatboys is not precious about it. The Big Pig Burger stacks a Certified Angus patty with Carolina pulled pork and a Texas onion ring; pulled pork turns up again on poutine with St. Albert curds and barnyard gravy, and over nachos under chili, cheese, and jalapeños. The smoke travels well off the meat, too. The vegetarian half of the menu is built out rather than tacked on — a Smoked Tofu BBQ Bowl over red-rubbed Southern rice with Hillbilly Heat sauce, Nashville Fried Cauliflower in maple butter hot sauce, a Smokehouse Taco Trio that swaps in pulled jackfruit, a Jack Wrap and a Tennessee Crunch Wrap alongside. It is smokehouse cooking pointed squarely at the table that doesn't order ribs.

Fatboys opened on American Thanksgiving in 2011, a fitting first service for a Southern smokehouse in eastern Ontario. Dawson still owns it, and the road-trip origin is not marketing gloss — it set the Southern Pride smoker, the dry rubs, and the regional naming that organize the menu to this day. Christopher Louis runs the pit. The cooking holds to slow-and-low as a matter of course: the rubs handle the seasoning, the smoker handles the time, and the sauces stay on the side where the kitchen wants them. The current menu still marks the milestone on its cover — fifteen years on from that first Thanksgiving — though the better proof is on the plate.

The drink list runs Southern as well. Bourbon anchors it — flights for working through a few pours at once, a back-bar of more than fifty bottles, country cocktails, and adult milkshakes poured into mason jars. The building keeps a covered patio for the warm months and a tucked-away speakeasy that groups book for themselves. Put it together and the use writes itself: a table pulls a tray and a bourbon flight into the middle, splits the ribs and the brisket among friends, and works through Dawson's map of the South one smoked plate at a time.