The Girl Who Ate Everything

This post was originally published on Serious Eats New York a week ago. Am I totally cheating by reposting it here? Yes. But seeing as I'm not terribly disappointed by the quality of this post, and I know not all of you read Serious Eats, I figure someone will enjoy this. Maybe.

The Fat Darrell from RU Hungry.

'Cause there ain't no doubt I love this land,
God bless the USA.

Lee Greenwood's patriotic crooning doesn't often pop into my head, but when it does, it's probably not for any reason Greenwood had in mind. Unless he wrote those words to behold the majesty of a sub roll stuffed with three different kinds of fried foods. In that case, I totally nailed it.

That fried food-stuffed roll is just one many members of the fat sandwich family. A fat sandwich is what you get when you cross a burger and/or a cheese steak and/or a gyro and/or bacon and/or eggs and/or dump on a sports bar appetizer platter—namely mozzarella sticks, chicken fingers, and fries—and douse it all in a sauce or two. It sounds like a monstrosity from Pawnee, Indiana,* but luckily for us non-fictional folks it hails from New Brunswick, New Jersey, where grease trucks at Rutgers University have been slinging fat sandwiches since the '80s.

* "First in friendship, fourth in obesity."