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When Brooklyn barbecue mainstay Fette Sau<\/a> opened in a former auto garage in 2007, it drew immediate crowds: Customers in skinny jeans and thick-rimmed glasses lined up along Metropolitan Avenue for a chance to sit cheek-to-jowl on communal wooden benches and devour juicy pulled pork, sugary ribs, peppery pastrami, and slabs of fat-backed brisket cut to order with a rotating assortment of sides and high-caliber American whiskey. Texas transplants may have grumbled about the prices \u2014 $22 per pound for some of the \u2019cue \u2014 but neighbors and food writers loved the place.<\/p>\n \u201cIt was still exotic to most Manhattanites. Same thing with the food press, who went apeshit for it,\u201d Foster Kamer, editorial director of Futurism<\/a> and publisher of the newsletter Fostertalk<\/a>, says. \u201cThere was nothing like it in NYC at the time: incredible, uncompromising, best-in-class BBQ, served in an unsparing way, the product of real BBQ nerdery.\u201d<\/p>\n Owner Joe Carroll\u2019s dedication to serving heritage breeds of meat from small farms in a bare-bones industrial interior was, at the time, the highest form of sophistication, emphasizing authenticity over embellishment. \u201cEverything about the place is telegraphing, This is the thing we care about, we\u2019re going to do it exceptionally well, and nothing else \u2014 not your comfort, not the way you like BBQ, not the way you\u2019ll smell leaving the place \u2014 matters,\u201d Kamer says.<\/p>\n Fette Sau kept company with other unpretentious, chef-driven standbys such as Diner<\/a>, Marlow & Sons<\/a>, Pies \u2019n\u2019 Thighs, Dumont Burger, and the Roebling Tea Room. In addition to that club, it joined what was at the time a very small number of New York City spots \u2014 Sylvia\u2019s<\/a>, the Harlem soul-food landmark, and Dinosaur Bar-B-Que<\/a> among them \u2014 serving southern-style barbecue at all.<\/p>\n Carroll had been inspired to open it after a Puerto Rican\u2013style pig roast his father took him to one summer inspired him to buy a smoker and go whole hog on his own. \u201cThis was the greatest meat I ever had in my life,\u201d he says. \u201cThey roasted the whole hog on a spit and shredded it. It was incredible.\u201d<\/p>\n Carroll occasionally roasted a pig on holidays for friends and staff at Spuyten Duyvil, the laid-back Belgian beer bar he opened with his then-partner, Kim Carroll, in 2003. But serving barbecue to the public didn\u2019t occur to him until a friend, Oslo Coffee<\/a> owner JD Merget, tipped him off to a defunct auto garage that hit the market in 2006. Carroll and his partner signed a lease for $4,200 per month, named the place Fette Sau \u2014 \u201cFat Pig\u201d in German \u2014 and opened<\/a> the following spring.<\/p>\n \u201cWhen I told my landlords what I wanted to do, they said, \u2018Are you crazy?\u2019 But it seemed like the perfect spot for me,\u201d Carroll says. \u201cI knew I could do a beer bar, but I lied to myself and my staff that we were opening a bar that would do some barbecue. I had no idea how to run a restaurant.\u201d<\/p>\n He figured it out, but the city\u2019s barbecue scene soon exploded \u2014\u00a0Mable\u2019s Smokehouse<\/a> arrived on Berry Street in Williamsburg in 2011; Mighty Quinn\u2019s<\/a>, which started as a stall at Williamsburg\u2019s Smorgasburg, established its first brick-and-mortar store in the East Village in 2012; Hometown Bar-B-Que<\/a> arrived in a 4,500-square-foot restaurant in Red Hook a year later\u00a0\u2014 while Williamsburg\u2019s demographics kept getting wealthier. Now, after nearly two decades in business, Carroll is extinguishing Fette Sau\u2019s fire. \u201cWe could have never imagined the success and support we found here on Metropolitan Avenue. It is with heavy hearts and full stomachs that we say goodbye, for now. Thank you for your immense generosity and loyalty over the years,\u201d the restaurant posted<\/a> on Instagram. Fans have until December 21 to pile up their last mounds of heritage pork belly and sides of broccoli salad (or they can head to Philly, where the Fette Sau that Carroll owns with Stephen Starr is staying open).<\/p>\n So what\u2019s happening? Are they being forced out to make way for a condo? Blank Street had a better offer on the space? Instead, changing tastes are to blame: Carroll, who also runs St. Anselm<\/a> down the street, says business just dropped off after the pandemic and he calculated he would run a deficit if the restaurant continued operating through the winter. It doesn\u2019t help that his rent quadrupled over time to $16,500 per month. \u201cThe numbers dropped so quickly this fall I thought, This is starting to cost me money, and I didn\u2019t want to throw good money at bad money,\u201d he said. \u201cHonestly, the business just wasn\u2019t there.\u201d<\/p>\n Carroll posits that the city\u2019s new crop of 25-year-olds are eating less meat and drinking less, and he hasn\u2019t seen many of Williamsburg\u2019s newer residents these days. \u201cThe people who moved to Williamsburg go out less and spend less money at bars and restaurants,\u201d Carroll said. \u201cAll the people I avoided by living downtown and in Brooklyn now live in my neighborhood. Now the people going out here are a bridge-and-tunnel crowd.\u201d The place with lines down the block now is L\u2019industrie Pizzeria<\/a>, a slice shop famous for its burrata pizza that\u2019s consistently rated among the city\u2019s best.<\/p>\n