Stick a fork in Fat Don’s. It’s done.

On Wednesday, University Housing Dining Services closed the door on the weekly specialty restaurant that has served up copious amounts of cholesterol-rich food since 1993. The restaurant has become an iconic symbol of the undergraduate experience at the University and will close as a result of the new dining center in the Ikenberry Commons set to open in the fall.

“I’ve met people in California and even when I was in Spain, (when) somebody says they’re going to Illinois, they’ve heard about Fat Don’s,” said the restaurant’s icon and patriarch Don Block, associate director of Housing Dining Services.

“It has almost become a cult. I don’t know how else to describe it,” said Dawn Aubrey, assistant director of Housing Dining Services. “It is a cult of carnivores, and we have served over 650,000 carnivores since the beginning in 1993. These are students that chant ‘Fat Don’s! Fat Don’s! More meat!’”

Aubrey said that dining services planned for 3,000 students — more than the 2,400 weekly average — to attend the Big Kahuna event, Fat Don’s swan song, complete with live music, Hawaiian decorations and cotton candy.

At the front of the massive line was Sam Cohen, sophomore in LAS.

“Fat Don’s is fantastic,” Cohen said. “It’s a really nice change from regular dorm food. I understand why they’re getting rid of it, but at the same time, it’s really sad.”

The idea for Fat Don’s initially came about 17 years ago when Block billed the idea as a truck-stop diner that served protein-rich foods like steak, ribs, chicken and lavish desserts.

“Why don’t we do one that has everything I like to eat?” Block proposed. “It’s not necessarily healthy, but popular.”

It is indeed popular. Even before the event opened its doors at 4:30 p.m., masses of students were lined up from the event’s entrances into the doors of the Peabody Drive Residence Halls.

“I don’t ever remember complaints about the line,” Block said. “We did have to put line guards in after a while to keep order in place.”

In recent years, however, the specialty restaurant has been criticized by some in the University community for being ecologically unsustainable.

Aubrey tried to dispel some of those criticisms.

“All of our meats are locally-sourced. They’re not only locally-grown, but they’re also locally-processed or butchered,” Aubrey said. She added that about 70 percent of Fat Don’s is local, compared to 25 percent for the entire department.

“I’m really big on organic and local food, so that’s really nice actually that they would support the community like that,” Cohen said.

Though Fat Don’s has become a haven for campus carnivores, dining services also offers “Field of Greens,” vegetarian lunch at Lincoln Avenue Residence Hall, for campus vegans and vegetarians.

As construction completes on the Ikenberry Dining Hall, Fat Don is not exactly hanging up his chef’s hat.

With an array of restaurants akin to the dining hall at Pennsylvania Avenue Residence Hall, Ikenberry will feature Don’s Chophouse, which will serve up many of the foods typical to Fat Don’s.

Despite the promise of the new dining hall that Aubrey says will be “downright fabulous,” the end of the Fat Don’s era has students and Fat Don’s creator nostalgic for the past, but also enthusiastic for the future.

“I was pretty upset, but I’m not living in the dorms next year so it’s a bittersweet thing,” said Angelica Moreno, sophomore in LAS.

Block shares a similar bittersweet sentiment.

“This is something we’ve done for a long time and it’s been very successful, so yeah it’s progress to move on and do things a little better and a little differently,” Block said.

As for the moniker “Fat Don?”

“I think it fits,” said Block, preparing to sit down in his charcoal throne and embrace a spatula scepter. “I came up with it. I can’t really complain about it; my wife can complain about it, but I really can’t.”