Colt's Texas Bar-B-Q (Dallas, TX)

I only had a short time for lunch today between court hearings, so I headed out on foot. Armed with my trusty Texas Monthly "BBQ Finder" iPhone app, I located Colter's Texas Bar-B-Q just a few short blocks from the courthouse.

This place is down in the retail section underneath the One Main Place building. I could smell the aroma of barbecue sauce throughout the corridor as I approached the restaurant's main entrance. When I arrived, I found "Colt's Texas Bar-B-Q" instead of the "Colter's" I was looking for. By the look of the mangled signage inside and out, I think they had recently undergone a rebranding for some reason. New management perhaps? There isn't much in terms of indoor seating, but the restaurant opens up onto a courtyard with lots of seating outside.

After a quick perusal of the wall-mounted menu, I settled on a Link Sausage Platter, which came with two sides. I picked potato salad and peach cobbler. It was nice that I could pick dessert for one of my sides.

As you can see in the picture above, my order came out with the fork embedded in the sauce-heavy sausage. The potato salad was full of big chunks of diced potatoes. There was plenty of mustard and a good crunch from the veggies, although it didn't really have much flavor beyond the mustard and onions.

The sausage came pre-sliced and covered in a massive helping of barbecue sauce. There was a good snap to the casings, enough that the plastic fork had a hard time pushing through. My first bite was definitely a little spicy, and the spice kept creeping up on me too. I sampled a little of the sauce to see if the source of heat was the sausage or the sauce. There wasn't much kick to the sauce, so it must be the meat itself. The sauce was a little thick for my liking and didn't add much in terms of overall taste, and to be honest, it reminded me of the bbq dipping sauce that came with my McNuggets last week.

I finished off my lunch with the peach cobbler, which seemed more like a deconstructed pie with all the pie crust that was mixed in. I wouldn't really describe it as gooey, more sticky, like it was being held together by a sugary glue that hadn't completely hardened yet. The flavor was decent, but there was definitely more sugar than peaches here. I feel like they missed the mark a little on the dessert, which in my opinion suffers from an obvious identity crisis - it's supposed to be peach cobbler, not diabetes pie.

All things considered, Colt's Texas Bar-B-Q was a good value for a quick walking-distance lunch. If I go back, I'll be picking different sides and asking for my barbecue sans the sauce.

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Colt's Texas Bar-B-Q
1201 Main St.
Dallas, TX 75202
(214) 752-8994
http://www.coltersbbq.com