Dinner at Fat Hat’s Grill – Sweetwater TN

When our friends Linda and Norm overwhelmed us with the vast array of East Tennessee restaurants that they’d eaten at, we kept looking and listening for an opportunity to actually visit a restaurant somewhere in the area before they got around to it! 

I’d remembered our friends mentioning Fat Stacks for breakfast over in Madisonville Tennessee.  They’d also mentioned that they understood that another restaurant was owned by the same folks over in Sweetwater Tennessee… I thought that they said Fat Max.  Then I was listening to the old time Sweetwater rock ‘n roll station and I heard a restaurant ad for the 100^th time.  The young lady doing the ad spoke so softly that I could never understand what the name of the place was…

So I turned up the radio and focused one night about a week ago…and I heard that young lady say “Fat Hat’s”!  Off we went for dinner… The concrete block structure looks like it may have been a soft serve ice cream outlet at one point.  FYI…the bathrooms have outside entrances on the far side of this picture.

When I looked at the menu I did recall a couple of items that were advertised on the radio.  It was all about the burgers and the onion rings!

The back of the menu features the Friday Fish Fry which was another item mentioned in the radio ad.  Unfortunately it was a Monday when we stopped in…

This is definitely a local down home kind of place.  Our server’s kids were doing their homework at one of the tables.  Everyone was very nice.  We learned that the soft spoken announcer who did those radio ads was the owner’s daughter. 

There was one other customer in the restaurant when we arrived and Laurie decided not to include him in the photo.  Despite the lack of sit down business, the stream of take-out customers was steady while we were there.

Laurie went for Fat Hat’s Super Burger, their 6 oz. best seller.  She added cheese and bacon and picked a small order of the onion rings for her side dish.  The burger was juicy, the bacon was plentiful and the onion rings were awesome!  Even though this was a small order, she couldn’t finish them…

When I saw a 3 piece chicken dinner on the menu, I decided to ignore the radio ad.  Other than fast food joints, actual fried chicken that isn’t fingers or strips is a rare commodity!  The chicken came with some decent coleslaw, a big slice of buttered Texas toast and I chose French fries for my main side dish.  The French fries were a little mushy and needed a touch longer in the fryer.  However the chicken was very tasty with a nice crunchy crust!  I would order it again although I want to return the next time for that fish fry.

So this isn’t quite the end of the story.  On Tuesday night our friends Linda and Norm texted Laurie to let her know that they were at Fat Hat’s and Linda was scarfing down some of those great onion rings.  We took some pride in the fact that we’d beaten them to this restaurant by one day!

Fat Hat’s Grill is located at 411 Sweetwater-Vonore Road in Sweetwater Tennessee.  Phone: 423-337-3686.  I couldn’t find a website but they are on Facebook at https://www.facebook.com/pages/Fat-Hats-Grill/115027528698182.

On the way home from dinner, Laurie took this photo along TN Hwy. 72 in Loudon County.  It’s the super moon reflecting off the cloud cover along the mountains in the distance…  Sorry about the windshield reflection.

Just click on any of the photos to enlarge them.

Thanks for stopping by for a nice casual dinner!

Take Care, Big Daddy Dave