What is Fat Anne's? | Fat Anne's

"What is Fat Anne's?"

This is by far the question we get asked the most often, and certainly a difficult question to answer! So, let’s break it down, shall we?

We are Tev (aka Fat Anne) and Mick. We started Fat Anne’s together back in 2018. Tev’s passion for food and incredibly creative menu ideas and design, combined with Mick’s “YES!” attitude and “go big or go home” perspective makes for the perfect kind of crazy you need to survive in this food industry. “I’ve got a crazy idea” is a commonly used phrase around here, and most times we end up bringing those crazy ideas to life.

In January of 2018, we opened Fat Anne’s Bakery & Bistro on Main Street, Fortuna.

A quaint little place with counter service, fresh pastries on display in an antique glass case, and a very small menu that changed EVERY DAY. Two salads, two sandwiches, and one soup daily, changing with what was available that week at the Farmer’s Market. We loved it.

Our lease was up for renewal in October of 2019, with a significant increase in rent. We weren’t quite ready to move out of our little space, but the building didn’t quite fit with our needs. A dear friend of ours reached out to us wanting us to rent out his vacant restaurant space….but it was in Ferndale. We weren’t interested in moving “across the river”, but after turning it down twice, he reached out for a third time, and we decided to take a look.

The building itself needed a facelift, it came with no equipment, just four walls and a hood, and it was going to take some work to make it ours. And then we walked out back to the patio, and knew we had to have it. It was perfect. Okay, maybe not perfect, because the patio needed the most work of all, but we saw right past all the dirty work of renovation, and could already see the finished product. Done, lease signed.

We spent the next few months painting every square inch of the place, inside and out, while also scouring the Internet for every used piece of restaurant equipment we could find within a 300 mile radius. Mick got to work on building out a kitchen, and Tev got to work on building out a menu. This time, we needed to have a larger menu, with items that weren’t changing every day. Bigger menu, bigger staff, longer hours, beer and wine, breakfast, lunch, AND dinner. We were still Fat Anne’s, but it was a whole different ball game.

Because we would be opening in the winter, we decided to hold off on any patio renovations until late spring/summer. We had our Soft Opening in December of 2019, and things were going great!

For our Grand Opening, we had a big ol’ Mardi Gras party, which kicked off a new annual tradition. We had that little restaurant packed, elbow to elbow, family style tables with buckets of seafood boil being passed all around. After every crawfish tail was sucked clean, everybody pitched in and rolled all the tables and chairs out back to clear the place for a dance floor. We had a Zydeco band from Richmond, and we danced all night long!

That was February 15, 2020…..

Needless to say, three weeks later, the whole world changed. The restaurant industry turned upside down, and we had to pivot. So we pivoted, and then when regulations would change, we would pivot again. Takeout only, indoor dining with masks allowed, wait no, back to takeout only, and so on. It was exhausting. Pivot after pivot, and then we got the news of outdoor dining allowed! But wait, the patio hasn’t even been touched yet. So with the help of family and friends, we scrambled to give it a quick clean up (8 dump loads of debris later). So in order to open back up for dining, we held off on a the full renovation we had originally planned. It was a little like putting lipstick on a pig, but with a couple strings of twinkle lights, it worked just fine for the time being.

We’ve always considered adaptability to be one of our greatest strengths, but after those long two years, we were absolutely burnt out and ready for a change. An incredibly difficult decision was made, and we closed the doors for good on November 19, 2021. However, giving up the space wasn’t so easy. We poured everything we had into that space, and it felt like it was where we belonged.

Overworked and tired, we were able to survive 2020 with the help of twinkle lights, propane heaters, and a sh*t ton of take out orders of buckets of fried chicken. I think I can say I speak for us all when I say we were ready to put 2020 behind us. But unfortunately 2021 came with what felt like just as many regulations, and more pivoting. Although 2021 wasn’t as devastatingly oppressing as 2020, it was still a lot to tackle. To make things work through these hard times, we started to offer more catering services, as well as throwing some of our own events, parties and festivals. We also finally found the time to finally get to that full renovation of the patio, which turned out amazing!

Closing the restaurant in Ferndale shifted our perspective, and opened up an entire new focus for Fat Anne’s. We really honed in on catering, events, pop ups, and renting out our restaurant space as a venue. We hosted birthday parties, baby showers, bridal showers, rehearsal dinners, private engagements and anniversary dinners, opened the restaurant for a monthly pop up, travelled for other pop ups throughout the county, catered weddings, did community events, did private in home dinner parties, threw our very own festival. It allowed Tev to dive back into her creativity again, and it felt like we really were able to carve out our own little corner, our own place in this “foodie” culture. It worked for us, it was thriving, we were thriving.

Unfortunately, there were some folks within the small town of Ferndale that didn’t love our business model, and wanted to see the space as a restaurant again in order to cater to the high foot traffic of tourism. We were urged to either open the doors to Fat Anne’s again as a regular brick & mortar, or move on and allow someone else do so. We were conflicted, but ultimately chose to leave the space, as we knew we did not want to feel the effects of restaurant burnout again

Closing that chapter of Fat Anne’s was tough, but we are adaptable, after all! After leaving Ferndale, we went back to where we started and landed back in Fortuna, and couldn’t be happier or more excited about it. Although this time we have allowed ourselves to let things evolve in time at our own pace (okay, there may have been quite a few life curveballs thrown in there as well), we are so happy to introduce…..