Fat Jacks Barbecue

Recently got back to Monona after an 11 yr absence. First stop is Fat Jack’s. Was there when they opened over 30 yrs ago, and have enjoyed every meal. Did not disappoint this time either. First plate of all you can eat ribs and chicken tends to be my last. Good food, friendly effective staff. Perfected over 3 decades!

I’ve been here almost a dozen times in less than a year. For smoked meat (pork beef or chicken) they are great-​best in the area and very good by any Midwest US standard. Red beans and rice is as good as I’ve had in New Orleans. But everything else is just awful. For dining in the salad bar is small and really bad. Lettuce is usually iceberg with some mixed greens and all wilted. Dressings are bad by Aldis standards and the side items are lousy. With a small salad bar they should either do excellent traditional or go different (southern? Pickled okra?) because what they have now just stinks. Appetizers have never been good. Lastly and perhaps most sadly their chicken wings are the worst I have ever had in any place from California to New York. Just the very worst. 7 – 11 would be better. Small, greasy and covered in the worst sauce you could imagine. They should do everyone a favor and drop it from the menu until they get a clue. I live close by, I go here often for the great smoked meat but I’ve finally learned to stay away and say no thank you to everything else-​which is sad. Their limitations are what separates them from average to great and the chasm is easily crossed with some quick changes.

The meat was dry but plentiful. The service was good. But without good food… I won’t be back.

Dry chicken with unseasoned potato wedges, Yuck. The ribs were smoked way to long, dry and they had way to much smoke flavor. What’s up with the red wine vinegar on the coleslaw without mayo or sour cream. The owner needs to go to Texas and find out how to improve his BBQ. However the the fried mushrooms were good.

My daughter just said: «The beans: the reason I don’t order the French fries.»

Nice salad bar, excellent baby back and spare ribs each prepared differently. Several BarBQue Sauces, Ices tea, No pulled pork or beef ribs. Canned Baked beans and steak fries are not my favorite. Great waitress. With a little work they could be 5 stars.

Loud ventilation fan overhead. Lighting the fireplace would have provided better ambiance and heat, it was cold inside. Meat was cooked well. Bbq sauce however was just ok. Coleslaw had a great flavor but looked like it was made with a slap chop from a tv commercial vs shredded. This place could easily be a 5 with some much needed DIY improvements.

I am digging the sauce. Brisket is amazing. If you order root beer here it comes in a big frosted mug. Lots of cool stuff from Wisconsin on the walls.

Not a very exciting place on a Friday night, but we didn’t have much of a choice since downtown was packed. We were too hungry to wait 1+ hours for any seats.
So Fat Jacks it is!
Service wasn’t the best, but not the worst. It took a while for someone to acknowledge me standing by myself in front of the hostess booth. When we were seated, our server introduced herself but didn’t come back for a while to take our order. We even contemplated leaving, but alas, she arrived. She was very nice though, so there’s that.
Food was mediocre. The cod special was lackluster – even the tartar sauce I had to dip it in didn’t give it much flavor. So I settled for smothering it in ranch. When in doubt, right? The fries lacked seasoning also. Into the ranch it went swimming.
My husband kind of liked his bacon burger he made. It was well done instead of the medium he requested. Same thing for our friend who ordered a steak. But I guess there was some flavor that made up for it.
We might consider coming back here since our friends talked about the BBQ ribs. Maybe.

Meat is a little dry, spareribs are good. The sauces aren’t that great. Try a bourbon sauce or a more tangy style sauce. The salad bar, 1 trip, for $ 5.50 is pretty expensive. Had to give the place a shot but I’m not impressed. Service was good though!

Used to eat lunch here every Wednesday for their Jambalaya lunch special and this was always a fun and enjoyable atmosphere with colleagues to eat lunch at.

Best of Madison 2015? Not so much.
I order the Pork Dinner which came with the salad bar, a choice of side and garlic bread. It was a great value for the price. The pork portion was huge. I chose the fries, which were supposed to be ranch fries. I am not sure if that meant the cut or the seasoning but they were just normal fries. The salad bar was simple, tasty, but nothing outstanding. Now the garlic bread, that was amazing. I kind of wish I had the option for all you can eat bread. The pork was tender and delicious. I paired it with the hot barbecue sauce on the table.
This place is good, but it is not amazing. The service was awesome. Very attentive and the interior is comfortable. It is simple and welcoming.

Fat Jacks was one of my first post-​college places that I frequented as it was a big favorite among the people that I worked with. I love BBQ, particularly pulled pork and Fat Jack’s delivered for several years as I rarely strayed away from their pork platter, which I usually took with garlic bread and fries. Combine their mild sauce, which they warn you is in the biggest bottle, and a Dr. Pepper, which should be sold at all good BBQ places, and that was a terrific combination of tastes. My friend at the time would complain if they moved from shredded to sliced pork, as they tended to bounce between the two, but I was usually a very satisfied customer.
Fast forward 15 years. I come back to Madison about twice a year and usually that includes a trip to Fat Jack’s, which has probably become more for nostalgia than for the food. My family and I went this summer and afterwards, I decided that it was time for me to write my first review.
Fat Jack’s totally has the look and feel of a Wisconsin styled supper club. It’s a log cabin interior with booths and tables. They write their specials on a little white board that you see as you walk in, and as you look to the left, you’ll see beer bottles from practically every Wisconsin micro brewery that you can think of, even ones that don’t exist anymore. The staff is friendly, though usually green with the turnover of kids that look high school and college ages. They have cool Wisconsin paraphernalia all over the walls.
Before I write a novel, let me get to the food and drink. They have spotted cow on tap. That’s a huge bonus. The only complaint I’d have in that regard is that they serve it in tiny glasses, which I can take down in 3 – 4 sips. I ordered my pork platter, which starts with a trip to the salad bar. It’s nothing to write home about, but a typical salad bar with fairly bland, uninteresting veggies that you can drown in dressing and sun flower seeds. It’s a salad bar. The fries are thick and tasty. The garlic bread is not bad, but a little dry. The pork itself was nice and tender in parts, but parts of it were overcooked, so I ended up eating about 80% of it. I didn’t have any soup, but typically their soups are very good.
That’s been my usual experience the last 5 years or so and after this last visit, I began to wonder if I should start thinking about other BBQ options from now on. Famous Dave’s may actually be better and I need to try Smoky John’s.
My rating as a young graduate would probably be 5 stars. Now that I’ve become a seasoned veteran of eating, I’m sad to do this, but I have to give it 3 stars. If Unilocal had another half star I could give, I’d probably do that, but 4 stars is too much.

Went to Fat Jacks for the first time in years and was expecting the same mouth watering ribs I had in the past. It was approx. 6:00pm. We decided on the Tuesday special — all you can eat chicken and ribs. When our food arrived both the chicken and the ribs were very dried out as if they were under a heat lamp for 8 hours. They were edible but far from mouth watering. I decided not to eat the chicken because of the dryness and focused on the ribs. Requested more ribs three times and it was not until the third small plate of small ribs did I receive mouth watering, tender ribs I was expecting from Fat Jacks. What a disappointment. I would not recommend Fat Jacks. Service was 3 – 4 stars but food was a 2 stars.

In town for business, searching Unilocal and came across Fat Jacks. Gave me a hankering for some BBQ so decided to swing by.
The inside has a cozy, down-​home kind of feel that I really liked. My waitress was friendly and attentive. I had the sampler which included smoked beef, pulled pork, and spareribs (you can devise your own sampler) — and it was delicious.
The food tastes like it was pulled fresh off a smoky campfire, just very ‘authentic’ for lack of a better word… many BBQ places either have too little smoke or it tastes like it is doctored up with liquid smoke flavoring, but not Fat Jacks.
They don’t do much to the meat besides the smoking, it was very tender and they house BBQ sauce was a nice addition, but they leave that up to you. When it is served, the meat speaks for itself. The ribs do have some kind of seasoning applied, but they were very good as well.
I would recommend to anyone in the area who is looking for some good BBQ.

This past 4^th of July, I hit the Monona 4^th of July Celebration in the Winnequah Park that a number of food kiosks set up. Not feeling in the mood for the typical brat, hot dog or hamburger selection, I decided on the offerings at the Fat Jack’s table under the tent. They had jambalaya and a pork sandwich. The jambalaya was excellent, hot with heat and with the right amount of spice, with nice chunks of vegetables and meat. The pork had the black crust on the outside that you look for when you are looking for barbecue. I was most happy, decided then and there to check out the restaurant. Dad and I went there for lunch. Dad got the special, which was chicken and meatballs over biscuits, and I got the combo lunch platter, where I chose the pork ribs and sliced pork with beans and cole slaw on the side. The cole slaw was homemade, as were the beans. The pork was delicious, needing only a small amount of the mild sauce to give it a little kick. Include with both meals was a large slice of crusty garlic bread. The place was very clean, including the bathrooms, without the sticky table syndrome that you get in some barbecue places. The iced tea was not chemical tasting and the waitress was attentive and pleasant. The only drawback was that the music was cranked a little loud, but all and all, a very pleasant place to have lunch if you are in the mood for barbecue. Apparently, they serve the jambalaya for their Wednesday special. We will be back.

I got the all you can eat spare ribs and chicken. I tried a chicken leg first and all I could taste was smoke. The leg and thigh weren’t that bad despite the heavy smoke. The breast was dry.
Next I tried the ribs. They were tender, but for some reason they tasted like sausage. Maybe they were smoked with sausage.
The baked beans were pretty good. They had a hint heat, which is good.
The coleslaw is what hurt. I could taste apple and it is vinegar based I believe, which I like, but it looked and tasted old.
Bottom line is I’ve had better BBQ in the Madison area.

Have been eating here for 25 years. It used to my favorite place for barbecue. I ordered a half rack of ribs and the bones were soft and tasted awful. The waitress took it back to the cook. The cook said that happens sometimes and sent out two cold pieces of rib. I won’t be going back sad to say.

The BBQ sauce was excellent and the lunchtime portions were a good size. They serve just the meat and I had to add the sauce at the table which is fine for me. Service was quick and polite and we were in and out within 30 minutes of being seated.
I am not crazy about the hickory smokiness of the neat but with the sauce it was a great meal.

I love this place!
My son and I were driving back from the Wisconsin Dells and decided to pull off for lunch and we found Fat Jacks on my GPS.
The outside of the place isn’t very impressive, but some of the best bbq places I’ve ever been to have been dumps. The inside is much nicer, decorated with local Wisconsin artifacts and pictures. My favorite was the old beer bottle collection by the entrance.
Anyway, we got sat and our waitress came over right away… super friendly and super nice lady. We asked for a recommendation and she basically went over the whole menu and said everything was great, and after eating there, I believe her.
I ordered the pulled pork lunch and my son got the fish fry. When she brought over the plates, I knew we were in trouble… there was sooo much food!
My son’s fish was very good, not greasy but light and flaky. My pork was excellent. The waitress asked if we wanted a hotter bbq sauce, I love spicy, so she brought it. Excellent! Smokey, spicy flavor. The sauces on the table were really good too.
If you are looking for some good, casual, non-​pretentious BBQ, Fat Jack’s is the place for you! Don’t let the outside fool you, the inside is clean and the food is excellent and they give you a ton of it!