I hadn't been able to eat lunch today, so I decided to make a quick pit stop in Lewisville on my way home from Denton. Fat Cow BBQ had some really great reviews online and seemed worth a try. I've been fooled by reviews before, but I went there with an open mind.
Fat Cow is located in a small shopping strip and is very much set up fast-casual style (think Chipotle). The interior has a very clean and open feel to it, but lacks that rustic, welcoming feel that you'll find at more traditional barbecue joints. It just didn't have any character to it.
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I didn't want to ruin my impending dinner, but I did want to get a good sampling of what Fat Cow has to offer. There were several options that seemed to fit that bill, but I settled on a 1 Meat Plate of brisket, with potato salad and mac & cheese on the side. I also added on an order of their Fat Japs (the PC Police are sure to be all over that one soon) for good measure.
The Fat Japs are smoked jalapenos, stuffed with pulled pork and cream cheese, wrapped in bacon, and served with ranch dressing. Yes, please!
My jalapenos had a nice char to them, but given the speed at which I received my plate, they clearly aren't cooked to order. I also somehow missed out on the creamy homemade ranch dressing that the menu advertised. Their decision not to de-stem the jalapenos was certainly a faux pas, but was easily correctable. The bacon was awesome and had a great flavor. I found a pretty powerful kick to these peppers, so be careful. The cream cheese helped temper the heat and added a good creaminess to the texture. My jalapenos didn't come with very much pulled pork inside, and, due to the level of heat, I couldn't really taste the pork either. I removed the meat from one pepper and found it to be rather bland actually. They might as well leave out the pulled pork and just drop the price a bit.
Once my mouth had cooled down a little, it was time to move on to the entree round.
The potato salad looked great and had lots of black pepper mixed in. It was a mayo-based potato salad, so there wasn't the potent mustard flavor that many cooks gravitate toward. There was a good crunch and bite from all of the onions, which added to the flavor profile. I also found a pleasant sweetness to the potato salad. As for the mac & cheese, it wasn't quite as flavorful. Like the potato salad, the mac also had plenty of black pepper, but it didn't add much in terms of flavor. The big spiral noodles were loaded with a creamy cheese sauce. It was better than Easy Mac, though not world class by any means.
I was expecting the usual sliced brisket, so you can imagine my disappointment at the pile of shredded beef that sat before me. There was no crust in sight due to this poor carving choice. I also couldn't see any smoke ring since they decided to confiscate all of the delicious bark. Meat like this is more conducive to sandwiches than to plates. At least the meat was tender and juicy, and I also found a decent amount of smoke. Actually, the only flavors I noticed were smoke and salt, so I decided to try their table-side duo of sauces. The "Original" sauce was nice and light with a slight sweetness to it. Surprisingly, the "Sweet" variety tasted exactly the same. I grabbed a bottle of "Original" from another table just in case someone mislabeled them. No such luck. I tried all three bottles again with exactly the same results, so who knows.
Despite the mediocre food, I couldn't resist snagging a Halloween-themed souvenir cup emblazoned with the phrase, "Our BBQ is so good, it's SCARY!"
The barbecue I found at Fat Cow was certainly scary, but probably not in the way they intended.
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Fat Cow BBQ
850 Valley Ridge Blvd.
Suite 128
Lewisville, TX 75077
(972) 420-9398
http://fatcowbbq.com/
They are closed and out of business now. I heard the food was bad.
ReplyDeleteI haven't been through Lewisville in a while, but it wouldn't surprise me. The food was pretty unimpressive.
DeleteI'm glad I "took a chance" and try Fat Cow. Considering every other review I read was great I was not surprised. The only time I was disappointed was when I was full. That meant no more ribs!!! NNNOOOOOOOOO!!!! Oh well there is always tomorrow. Drop by and give them a try, THEY ARE STILL OPEN AND THRIVING. I'm sure your pallette is refined enough taste the difference in the two types of bbq sauce.
ReplyDeleteAs a matter of fact, my "palate" is refined enough to taste the difference. That's the point. These two sauces tasted exactly the same. I'm not suggesting that their Original and Sweet sauces are in fact the same, which is why I said perhaps they'd been mislabeled or maybe mis-filled.
DeleteI didn't try the ribs, so I really can't comment too much there. Although, from all of the pictures on Yelp, their ribs don't seem to have any crust at all. The sausage also looks like store-bought Hormel.
Oh, and 42% of their Yelp reviews over the past 3 months have 1-3 star ratings (out of a possible 5). So I suppose saying "every other review [you] read was great" is pretty accurate. I think a restaurant should try to do better than only satisfying about half of their customers.
I'm confused who is commenting on my post?!?!? The person who wrote the blog or the person that made one of the two original comments if not both since one is "unknown". Check the 4 1\2 star google rating since but I guess you forgot to mention that??? Seems to me that this is one person with an axe to grind or do people always comment on there own blog acting like they're someone else?
ReplyDeleteI don't know if you're trying to be cute or what, but if you'll scroll to the bottom you'll see that I'm clearly listed as the author of this blog. And no, I didn't make the "unknown" comment.
DeleteYou can rely on the overall rating all you want. There are a lot of places that used to be good and have fallen off over time. Once a place achieves a certain rating with a high number of reviews, even dozens of awful reviews in a row won't alter the overall rating that much. It's called math, but anyway. And no, I have nothing against Fat Cow personally, but I do stick by my original critique.
As a matter office Jared, I'm done with this considering we're surely the only two people reading your blog. We are the only two that have commented on it, right? Take care now, bye bye then.
ReplyDeleteNot to boast, but my blog has over 700 Facebook followers. I'm pretty sure you're not the only other person reading it. Also, nice sign-off, Ace Ventura.
DeleteSorry bout the auto correct there that's a matter of fact not office.
ReplyDelete