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Will Cowboy Chow Be A Gravy Train?
By The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly Law Reviewers
Pardner, when’s the last time you had a heapin’ bowl of Law Reviewers Brand Chili? Well, that’s too long! After a long time on the trail, it’s good to know there’s finally a place to relax and kick up our dusty ol’ Cole Haans - er, boots. Other parts of our State (not “state”) may each have their mess tent and food wagon manned by a grizzled man with gray beard, hat with the brim turned up, and the singular moniker “Cookie,” but Dallas seems to have a void in that department. Luckily, the Texadelphia in Deep Ellum closed down a while back, and the space has been taken over by Cowboy Chow, the brainchild of some of the same folks who brought us Twisted Root Burger. The location is quite appropriate, given that Deep Ellum has become the lonesome frontier of the Dallas dining scene, and is good news if you live or work near Baylor Hospital or downtown.
The website bills the place as featuring “open range dining” inspired by the chuck wagon cooking that used to be served to the cowboys and loggers of Texas. We kinda doubt that the cowboys of old drizzled queso fresco and ancho pepper salt on their homemade potato chips (and we had no idea that Texas had any loggers or logs for that matter) but, hey, the theme is a clever twist on your standard local BBQ-type establishment. Braised meats are the order of the day, and they braise them in everything from Dr. Pepper to beer, bourbon or just about anything else they could find in their liquor cabinet. And if you’re not a carnivore, you’ll be stuck ordering the salad (hold the meat).
On an earlier visit in the first couple of weeks after opening, we got the trainee server with the supervisor who watched over him like a hawk. The service was a little slow, but the guy was trying hard. When we went back recently, the service was lightning fast for most of the meal, but our waitress was a little too eager on the up-sell – if you looked in her direction, she thought that meant you wanted to order an extra appetizer and dessert. So, on balance, the first visit was better service-wise.
The place is decorated like it’s the saloon at the Old Wild West sector of Six Flags. There’s green, red and black & white-colored saloon-style print wallpaper, cedar wood, wild west show murals, a couple of buffalo heads, a bar that apparently isn’t open yet and a spittoon. All that’s missing are a costumed gentleman sitting at a player pian-uh and a balcony full of whores (What, you don’t remember them from Six Flags?). The serving implements are in line with the cowboy/country conceit – most dishes are served in tin bowls, the camp ground-style utensils are in a pickling jar at your table and the check comes in a playing card box. The overall effect will either send you into kitsch overdrive or Back to the Future Part III.
So, let’s get down to bin’ness now, shall we? For drinks, you can get a carafe of watermelon ice tea (2 bucks – and we’re not just being colloquial, that’s what it says on the menu), which was sweet without being too cloying, or they have bottles of pure cane sugar Coke from Mexico and pure cane sugar Arbita root beer for 2 ½ bucks. The Cowboy Nachos (4 bucks) were a little skimpy for the price, but the homemade potato chips with queso fresco, ancho chile salt and ranch dressing drizzled on them were quite tasty even though the toppings kept dribbling off the chips. The Fried Green Tomato Lollipop (2 bucks) actually didn’t taste quite fried enough, but the tomato was satisfyingly tart. Still, it’s all about the braised meats at Cowboy Chow, and we’re happy to report that they were delicious in every dish we tried. The Cowboy Grilled Cheese (8 bucks) had plenty of juicy braised brisket and gooey melted cheddar on some Texas toast. 9 bucks seemed a little steep for just two tacos and some wild rice, but the #5 tacos added some blazingly hot, fresh jalapenos – clearly they’re not worrying about Salmonella here – to the same brisket along with mashed potatoes, cowboy caviar (a/k/a black beans & corn) and avocado-like cream (a/k/a creamy guacamole) for a perfectly filling meal. In fact, on one visit, the taco meat was a filling meal on its own with the two tortillas just serving as lining for the bowl. The brisket in the Mash Tater Parfait (8 bucks), served in a pickling jar, wasn’t as moist, probably because it got sucked into the spuds, but the combination of meat & potatoes mixed in with strips of tortilla chips and cheese still makes for a winning dish. The big disappointment was the Cowboy Chocolate Cookie dessert with ice cream (6 bucks), which was two warmed, city slicker-sized cookies in a tin with ice cream. It was advertised for two, but it was barely enough for one.
While it may not be the cheapest place to head for lunch along the wagon trail, Cowboy Chow gives you good food and a fun atmosphere in an area that needs a new draw. On our old-school-Six-Flags-rides-inspired five gavel scale, where five gavels is the always-thrilling Shock Wave and one gavel is the sleep-inducing Mini-Mine Train, we give Cowboy Chow three and three-quarters gavels or the Judge Roy Scream after it’s had been treated with 3,000 gallons of WD-40. Yee-ha!!
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