A steakhouse off I-95 turns out a Sunday lunch plate that would make a church potluck proud.
There’s a particular kind of restaurant that only exists within sight of an interstate exit. It has to be two places at once: a dependable stop for travelers who will never come back, and a regular haunt for locals who come back every week. Most of these places manage one or the other. Fat Jack’s, which has sat at Exit 57 in Walterboro since 1999, in front of the Walmart on Bells Highway, does a better job of both than its location would suggest.
The restaurant bills itself as the home of Sterling Silver steaks, and its dinner menu leans on the King and Queen cut ribeyes. But on a Sunday at noon, the real business here is the Sunday Lunch Special: $12.99 for fried chicken, two Southern sides and a roll. It’s the kind of meal the Lowcountry has eaten after church for generations, and Fat Jack’s treats it with the right mix of seriousness and lack of fuss.
The chicken is the anchor, and choosing dark meat is the right call. It’s the more forgiving cut, and fried chicken lives or dies by it. The sides are a tour of the Southern steam table at its best. Squash casserole and broccoli casserole, two dishes that live in the space between vegetable and dessert, share one plate. On the other, fried okra sits beside mashed potatoes under a blanket of gravy. Nothing here is reinvented, and nothing needs to be. A meal like this succeeds when it tastes like the version you remember, and this one does.
Dessert is a slice of key lime pie, $7.99, and it earns its place at the end of the meal.
Service matches the setting. It’s practical, unhurried and friendly, with a dining room that knows the rhythm of a Sunday crowd. Lunch for two, dessert included, comes in under $40 with tax, and at that price it’s hard to find a better midday meal between Savannah and Santee.
Fat Jack’s is not trying to be a destination. It’s trying to be the place you’re glad you stopped, and on a Sunday afternoon in Walterboro it’s exactly that.
HERE Review
- Food: GOOD+
- Service: GOOD
- Price: $ (Sunday lunch for two with dessert, $38.39 with tax)
Fat Jack’s of Walterboro
2122 Bells Hwy, Walterboro, SC 29488, at I-95 Exit 57
(843) 549-5096
Open daily for lunch and dinner, with a full bar, outdoor seating and catering available
Filed under: Beaufort SC Food News