| rev:text
| - Alright, this place has been reviewed probably enough times for my review to not blow your mind with knowledge. But hey! I love writing reviews, it almost warrant's how much I eat just to tell you how awesome it is (and you know, cause food is awesome).
My experience at Cowboy Ciao was a prospective/struggling foodie's DREAM in the making. My friends parents invited me and 8 of my friends (yeah imagine that chaos) for a fabulous dinner (i.e. he was cuffing the bill). He kept ordering us cocktails, bottles of white and red wine and every appetizer known to man. We were there drinking, eating and laughing for 4 hours, and I can surely say it was worth every minute of it.
Heaven. This is foodie heaven. I'm not even ashamed to say this is all the stuff I ate:
STETSON CHOPPED (Salad)
Its the reason why most people come to Cowboy Ciao, yet the ingredients aren't even listed on the Menu. Never fear, Yelper in need, here is what is in the famous stetson chopped: Israeli (pearl) couscous, Roma tomatoes,super-sweet dried corn, arugula, smoked salmon, asiago cheese, toasted pepitas, dried black currants. Dressing: buttermilk ranch $13
Since this is a fancy schmancy restaurant, the server will toss the salad for you and use half of the dressing, which is all you need to get the creamy, crunchy, sweet, salty, weird-yet-delicious mixture that is this fascinating salad. There is salmon, there is veggies, there is couscous, there is everything you could want in a motherloving salad, and this one, this ones the freaking best.
PORK BELLY & WAFFLES
A fancy take on chicken and waffles, the pork belly was tender and delicious but the 5-spice waffle was just a plain waffle that lacked sugar. The appetizer was topped with an alternative-syrup that made the sweet and salty dish super successful. Hmmmm, tasty tasty calories
MAC AND CHEESE
This is supposed to be a "different take" on the traditional M&C but the taste is pretty standard. The spiral noodle is al dente and the brie makes the texture very creamy but super mild in flavor. I would have loved some stronger cheeses (asiago, goat, blue) or spices to kick it in punch. At $7 its a small cup of noodles that works great as a side dish or as a tiny appetizer for 2 people. Hmmmmm cheeeese.
QUESADILLA DEL DIA
Or queso-dila of the day for those that don't speak the language. This one was filled with (what I think was) pulled pork filling which was tender, blasting with flavor and topped with a creamy creme fraiche on a toasty quesadilla. Although it just was one shell folded in two, the meat filling was so..errr.. well, "filling" enough to be a meal of its own. Easy to say, best quesadilla i've ever had. Hands down.
DUCK CONFIT
Questionable presentation, amazing flavors. It was hard to actually recognize it as "duck" because they place a laaarge layer of cotija cheese on top that melted and covered the entire dish. Now, don't get me wrong, i looooooooove me some cheese, but this dish didn't need it, or it didn't need so much of it. The duck that I discovered under the cheese bed was cooked well and was quite tender, but the green bell pepper at the bottom was under-cooked and unnecessary for the dish. Great flavors but weird execution in some of those component.s
SALMON ENTREE
A giant piece of crispy salmon on top of arugula salad and veggies. The salmon was zesty/limey, tender and a had the perfect amount of salt. This is a protein-health-concious' dream: tons of perfectly cooked protein with simple ingredients, tender veggies and not a carb insight. Freaking fantastic and pretty guilt free.
PARTY MOUTH DESSERT
Meh, not the "Big finish" that I would need at the end of the feast just described above. This dessert was like a sticky pecan bar served with vanilla ice cream and a crispy cookie. It was overly sweet, sticky and nutty- and extremely hard to cut with a spoon.
Drinks, Service and More
We drank. A lot. More than anyone should really ever allow us to, but oh well. I ordered a traditional Moscow Mule because their signature "Mezcal" version seemed a little too weird for me. Then we had two bottles of white, 3 bottles of red (all recommended by our server because we were too lazy to read the giant wine bible) and some grapas to finish off the meal. All our cocktails and wine selections were excellent and had a constant refill by our server. Our server managed a loud, needy and drunken table of 12 adults behaving like college students on a free meal. He was great when we asked him for suggestions and patient while we figured out what we wanted to do throughout the meal.
I can't imagine what the total came out to (10 cocktails, 5 bottles of wine, 12 shots of grapa, 6 appetizers, 14 main entrees and 1 dessert), but I am happy I had this one chance to get so spoiled on the food and booze I love so much. The foodie in me was in foodgasm heaven. The healthy-small-portion eater in me had a really bad stomach ache the next day. Woops.
|
![[RDF Data]](/fct/images/sw-rdf-blue.png)
![[cxml]](/fct/images/cxml_doc.png)
![[csv]](/fct/images/csv_doc.png)
![[text]](/fct/images/ntriples_doc.png)
![[turtle]](/fct/images/n3turtle_doc.png)
![[ld+json]](/fct/images/jsonld_doc.png)
![[rdf+json]](/fct/images/json_doc.png)
![[rdf+xml]](/fct/images/xml_doc.png)
![[atom+xml]](/fct/images/atom_doc.png)
![[html]](/fct/images/html_doc.png)