Closing Fat Albert’s starting to sink in for owner Sue Albert

GREELEY — The news is hardly real today. On Monday, Sue Albert dropped a bombshell on Greeley. After 42 years, she would be closing the iconic Fat Albert’s restaurant that has become her family and her life.

“It’s going to be crazy today,” she said Tuesday morning after notifying people on her website that Aug. 31 will be the restaurant’s last day of service.  “We put it out there, and I expect it will be my own little nuthouse, but it will be joyful in some ways. So many memories.”

“To everything there is a season,” she said with a hint of melancholy. “It sounds so cliché, but somehow it seems really real today.”

But she will worry about that another day. She had pies baking and wasn’t about to let them burn. By noon Tuesday, there was already a line out the door, and she was busy, to say the least.

Sue notified the community of her closing on Sunday; Fat Albert’s is one of a small group of longtime Greeley restaurants that have pulled up stakes after years of serving the community. Potato Brumbaugh’s closed in 2006 after operating for 25 years. JB’s Diner closed in 2021 after 84 years.

Fat Albert’s was affectionately known and beloved in Greeley for its deep-fried take on a traditional Monte Cristo sandwich, and the mile-high meringues and other scrumptious pies that had people flocking to the restaurant in droves, especially during the holiday season. On any given Thanksgiving, she and her staff would be baking up to 300 or more pies to send out the doors to put an endcap on their holiday tables.

A former manager at the Moot House, now Cattleman’s Steak House and Saloon, Albert decided she should open her own restaurant. In 1982, she took the leap. Her police officer husband, Roger, stayed on with the Greeley Police Department just in case her plans were not the best-laid.

“After it started getting really busy, we decided it was time for him to come on board,” Sue said. “Everyone always looked at him and said, ‘You’re Fat Albert.’ Well, we’re the Alberts. You don’t want to go to skinny Albert’s to eat, so it was a takeoff of that, because if I’m going to spend good money, I’m going to have to make good food.”

Roger died in 2005, and Sue soldiered on, with her restaurant becoming even more of a mainstay in the community.

“I have kids who worked for me when we first opened, and now their kids work for me,” Sue said. “It’s its own little entity.”

Ruth Quade worked off and on at Fat Albert’s since it opened; both of her sons found a job there as well. She said she made a lifetime of friends working there.

“If you were a good employee, she’d always take you back,” Quade said. “I left and pursued a career, had medical bills, put myself through college working there, and helped put my boys through college working there. It’s been kind of like a little family.”

The restaurant opened March 1, 1982, and because it was close to St. Patrick’s Day, they would celebrate their anniversary with green beer and corned beef and cabbage was an indelible offering on the holiday, as well as a commemorative T-shirt.

“We have T-shirts for every year still hanging around” on the walls. “I don’t have any plans yet. I’m just going to give myself some time. I could work forever. I can’t stand being alone with myself. I come to work and I’m around young people and energy and it’s a wonderful joy for me. We’ll have a lot of stuff to do to get it shut down and people to visit with.”

When she opened, she came with plenty of new menu ideas, especially her take on the Monte Cristo. At Fat Albert’s, it’s made of a “thinly sliced ham, turkey and Swiss cheese on fresh bread dipped in tempura batter and deep fried to a golden brown.”

“The Monte Cristo has always been the No. 1 seller, since day one,” Sue said. “The original Monte Cristo is more like French toast. Ours is not. Because we’re Fat Albert’s, we stick it in a tempura batter and fry it.”

For Quade, she said she’ll miss the French Hen chicken sandwich, “a delicious chicken sandwich on garlic bread with Hollandaise sauce.”

“And we had awesome soups,” Quade recalled. “Everyone knows about the pies, but they had really good soups. The Manhattan clam chowder, or cream of mushroom soup.”

Albert said she didn’t consider selling the restaurant. She has always leased the building, and the thought of someone else taking over wasn’t appealing.

“I wouldn’t want someone to come to Fat Albert’s under different ownership and say this is not like Sue would have done it,” she said. “It’s just the right time.”