The Fattened Caf.

The Fattened Caf is a Filipino barbecue restaurant just off Cherokee Street, and one of the clearest success stories to come out of this part of the city in recent years.

It belongs to Darren and Charlene Young, a husband-and-wife team who began in 2018 with pop-ups around south St. Louis. The pop-ups drew a following, the following became a residency in the kitchen at Earthbound Beer, and the residency eventually became this permanent restaurant on South Jefferson.

Grilling is the heart of it. Filipino barbecue is its own tradition – marinated, sweet-savoury, cooked over fire and eaten with rice – and the pork and chicken barbecue are what most people order first. The kitchen’s longganisa, the Filipino sausage, and its barbecue sauce have both outgrown the restaurant: they are now sold in supermarkets across Missouri, which is a rare thing for a business that started with a folding table.

Beyond the grill, the restaurant serves breakfast and lunch through the week with dinner at weekends, pours coffee from Veloria, a Filipino-American roaster in Chicago, and brings in desserts from Liz’s Filipino Desserts in St. Charles. Kamayan feasts – the communal meal eaten by hand off banana leaves – are part of what the Youngs set out to share.

The restaurant sits on South Jefferson, a couple of blocks from the eastern end of Cherokee Street, and is an easy addition to a day spent on the Row.