Fat Sandwich

Around 1 a.m. outside a New Brunswick truck window, a cook lifts a basket of fries out of the oil, shakes it twice, and tips the whole thing straight into a split sub roll that already holds chicken fingers or a griddled cheesesteak. Lettuce and tomato go on top, then ketchup or mayonnaise, and the roll is wrapped so hot that students pass it hand to hand. That is a fat sandwich: a plate of food, sides included, folded into a single roll. The fries sit inside the bread, which is why a Rutgers student orders a "fat" something where anyone else would ask for a sub with a side. The wrapping fogs up from the inside, and the smell of fryer oil follows the bag down the sidewalk.

Order of loading carries the engineering. Fries go in against the bottom of the roll, where they take the grease and sauce that would otherwise soak through the crumb, and the hot center lands on top so its steam has somewhere to go. Lettuce and tomato are the only cold things in the roll, and they are why the first bite crunches at all; by the fifth minute the wrapping has trapped enough steam that the fries soften and the bread gives. A fat is a sandwich with a short window. It is handed over hot, eaten standing or walking, and a long roll cut in half is the unit of sharing, since one half is already a meal.

The names turn a menu into a shorthand. The Fat Cat is two cheeseburgers with fries, lettuce, tomato, mayonnaise, and ketchup. The Fat Moon is chicken fingers with bacon and egg. The Fat Sam pairs cheesesteak with grilled chicken, the Fat Koko puts pizza steak and mozzarella sticks around the fries, and the Fat Romano, credited to a Rich Romano, adds Taylor Ham, the New Jersey pork roll, and an egg to a cheesesteak. The Fat Darrell, chicken fingers and mozzarella sticks with marinara, became the best known after Maxim named it the top sandwich in America in August 2004. Each name is a person or a joke, and each stands for a fixed stack, so a customer can recite the whole order in two words.

Price was part of the appeal. Fat sandwiches reportedly cost only about a dollar more than a plain hamburger at the trucks, which made one roll a full dinner for a student with a few bills. The trucks kept late hours to match: closing time was set at 3 a.m. in 1996, then pulled back to 2 a.m. A dietitian's estimate for one popular fat ran to about 1,700 calories, a figure that appears in print more often than any recipe does. Sports Illustrated ranked the trucks the top post-game activity in the country in 2005, and a stop after a game or a night out became part of the Rutgers calendar the way a tailgate is elsewhere.

Because a fat is a grammar more than a recipe, new ones keep appearing. A cook swaps the center, keeps the fries and the lettuce and tomato, and a regular gives the result a name. Chicken cutlet, pizza steak, egg, bacon, and Taylor Ham all move in and out of the center, while the roll, the fries, and the wrapper stay put. The fries stay tucked in the roll rather than served beside it, whatever the center.

From College Avenue to Lot 8

The first fat is the Fat Cat, and its start is told two ways. One account has it originating in the 1970s at a local restaurant, and a New York Times account points to 1979; either way it reached the trucks and became their top seller through the 1980s, holding that spot until the Fat Darrell arrived in 1997. Its stack, two cheeseburgers and fries in a roll with lettuce, tomato, and sauces, set the pattern that later names varied.

The trucks themselves began in the early 1980s, when vendors licensed by New Brunswick parked along College Avenue, mostly near Voorhees Mall, and earned the nickname for the fryer. In the early 1990s the city banned parking on that street, and Rutgers gave the vendors space in faculty Lot 8 across the road under university contracts.

The trucks spent about twenty years in Lot 8 before Rutgers removed them in August 2013 to make room for a new building. The site is now The Yard, home to a restaurant called R U Hungry?, which keeps the old truck name and sells fat sandwiches on the ground where the Lot 8 trucks parked until August 2013.