Anselm, a modern steakhouse that consistently appears on Eater NY’s 38 Essential Restaurants. We’re not really a restaurant,’” Carroll says.īut Fette Sau’s immediate success told Carroll that he was more than a bar owner, and in 2010 he added a third spot to his burgeoning Williamsburg empire - St.
“When we were building out Fette Sau, I kept on telling everyone - more because I needed to hear it myself - ‘This is really a bar that has some barbecue. However, Carroll wasn’t sure he could pull off the transition from bar owner to restaurateur. Years later, Carroll seized upon another gap in the market when he found a space that he thought would be perfect for barbecue - not the sit-down, Blue Smoke-style barbecue that was available in New York at the time, but a place that embraced the “real aesthetic of barbecue.” He opened Fette Sau in 2007. “It was the days of $2 cans of PBR ruling every place around here, so to open up a beer bar selling like $9, $15 beers was crazy,” Carroll says. Although a scene was beginning to take shape, few bars were prioritizing craft beers. The neighborhood had yet to fill with restaurants and millennial-friendly residents, and Carroll was making a career change from music to the bar business. In 2003, he launched his Williamsburg, Brooklyn, empire with craft beer bar Spuyten Duyvil. Joe Carroll knows how to make a hit Brooklyn restaurant.
