BBQ is in the name but tacos are the game for this Alabama food truck
Back when he was making his rounds for Birmingham’s Buffalo Rock Company, Charles Pilot loved to check out all the food trucks along his route.
“I used to always stop by the taco trucks,” he says. “I enjoy me a good taco.”
Those taco treks fueled a creative fire in Pilot, who got the cooking bug from watching the culinary adventures of globetrotting chefs Andrew Zimmern and Anthony Bourdain on the Travel Channel.
“You see a lot of people that have a lot of hidden talents, but you gotta do what you gotta do from day to day,” Pilot says. “I had a passion for food, but rolling soft drinks paid the bills.”
Over time, though, Pilot nurtured and harnessed that passion, and in the summer of 2021, he rolled out a food truck of his own – the Mexican-influenced and Southern-flavored Fat Charles BBQ.
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You’ll find Pilot and his younger brother, Chris, working their truck all over the Birmingham metro area — from Bessemer to Chalkville, UAB to U.S. 280, Avondale Brewing Company to the Forestdale Food Truck Park.
This past fall, Fat Charles BBQ also was one of the food vendors during the Alabama football games at Bryant-Denny Stadium in Tuscaloosa.
“Yeah, we’re blessed, man,” the easygoing Pilot says. “It’s wild to see how far we’ve come in such a short time.”
First-time customers expecting to order a pulled pork sandwich or a slab of hickory-smoked ribs may be in for a surprise, though.
These days, Fat Charles BBQ is far better known for its street tacos, quesadillas and Mexican pizzas than it is barbecue.
Let’s let Pilot explain.
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An order of birria beef tacos from the Fat Charles BBQ food truck.(Bob Carlton/[email protected])
From barbecue to tacos
While still working his day job as a soft drink salesman for Buffalo Rock, Pilot launched a barbecue business out of his house in Clay in northeast Jefferson County in 2017.
“I would go to work Monday through Friday, and we would sell plates out of my house over here in Clay on Saturdays,” he says. “We would have lines (of customers) up and down the street, and we would have neighbors directing traffic.
“It was primarily brisket and ribs and pork butts, and I was making my own sausage,” he adds. “Watching cooking shows, I kind of became a self-taught junior pitmaster.”
Pilot named his budding business Fat Charles BBQ, using a nickname he picked up back in his days at E.B. Erwin High School in Center Point.
“The differentiating factor between me and other Charleses was I was a little heavier than the rest of ‘em,” he explains. “So, it was like, well, I’m just going to take it and run with it.”
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He collaborated with a co-worker at Buffalo Rock, Andrew Bender, to design the Fat Charles BBQ logo, a computer-generated drawing of the bearded Pilot in a bucket hat and sunglasses.
“He didn’t even charge me for it,” Pilot says. “That was the crazy thing about it.”
While the barbecue sales were good, Pilot really hit on something when he added tacos to his repertoire.
It happened almost by accident.
“I had some leftover brisket one day and threw it inside of a taco and took a picture of it and put it on Facebook,” he says. “I had like almost a thousand shares and likes. And that’s when the tacos took precedence over the barbecue.
“I adore Mexican culture, and the cuisine,” he adds. “What I tried to do is blend somewhat of a traditional Mexican taste and a down-South barbecue feel.”
Customers wait on their orders outside the Fat Charles BBQ food truck in downtown Birmingham.(Bob Carlton/[email protected])
Taking it to the streets
Pilot left Buffalo Rock in May 2021, and a couple of months later, the Fat Charles BBQ food truck hit the streets of metro Birmingham.
His first stop was the parking lot of a Center Point salon where his mother went to get her nails done.
“We used to take plates up there, and they were like, ‘When you get your truck, let us know, and we’re going to let you park in front of the shop,’” Pilot recalls. “And the next thing you know, we had a line of 20 people. And it just went from there.”
In the year and a half since, their menu has evolved to include not only their brisket, chicken, shrimp and birria beef tacos, but also fried shrimp, chicken wings, Nacho Burgers and Chuck Dogs.
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The 35-year-old Pilot is always experimenting – “doing stuff that I haven’t done before,” he says – and now that he’s operating out of a commissary at Yellow Bicycle Catering Company in Homewood, he says it allows him to be more creative.
He’s even talking about buying a second truck so he can start serving barbecue again.
“We do have a lot of people that come in and look for the ribs — especially what we call our ‘Day Ones,’ the people that used to come park in my driveway at home and get the ribs and the smoked chicken,” Pilot says. “We are getting ready to get back into it.”
To follow the Fat Charles BBQ food truck on Facebook and Instagram, go hereand here. For additional information, go here.
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