UPDATE! *****NOW CLOSED for Business

Cowboy Ciao is located in Old Town Scottsdale’s Art District. They serve up American Chow and food lassoed with Global influences. This is an upscale but casual place and the decor is unique. I think you might call this sort of shabby chic and slightly classic and formal at the same time.

It happened to be Restaurant Week and they were serving one of the most intriguing three course menus out there for $33.00.

While we were deciding on what to try my husband had the job of deciding on a bottle of wine from their enormous catalog of wines. The catalog might have been a HUNDRED pages and offered THOUSANDS of choices. You could be there all night if you actually read the whole menu.

I started with the Squash Blossoms.

They were as light as air and seemed oil free. They contained some unusual ingredients like huitlccoche (the mushroomy tasting Mexican Truffle also called Corn Smut because it grows on corn) and the blossoms were nestled in a very tasty pimento coulis. Everything in the squash blossoms tasted very balanced. I have no idea how they made farmer’s cheese taste so good. These Squash Blossoms were delicious I could have eaten a big bowl of them and called it a day.

My husband had the Duck Skewers.

I didn’t taste them but my husband said they were full of interesting flavors but the duck was rare. At this point we weren’t checked on so my husband just ate them.

We shared one of the specialty dishes ($10.00 add on that is on the menu for $25.00) that this restaurant is well known for.

The Mushroom Pan Fry in Ancho Cream over Double Cooked Polenta. This is a Mushroomy Delight that if you slapped it on a shoe it would make an old shoe taste good. Gosh it really is good and the polenta in there sort of soaks it all up.

A slight miss of the evening was when the waiter brings our dinners when we are in the middle of enjoying the mushrooms. My husband says something like I guess our dinners will get cold and the waiter just leaves. I also note that we were at a small table and had to shuffle the plates around to make the dinner fit on the table.

Well any who…..

For dinner I had the Jerk Seared Ahi Tuna.

The Tuna had a really good sear on the exterior with interesting flavors. It wasn’t spicy but it was delicious. This tuna ate like a light clean steak from heaven. It was very meaty but not heavy like a steak made of beef. If I closed my eyes when I ate it I might not know that it was fish because it was so clean tasting. Vegetables were fresh and tender crisp and the plate came with a unique mound of sweet potatoes sweetened with mashed bananas that also had a bit of a tang to them.

My husband had Hanger Steak with Black Garlic Potatoes and Smoky Béarnaise Sauce with Grilled Rapini Gremolata.

The Steak was flavorful and tender. Potatoes were great and all the sauces went well with this dish. Hate to be picky but It would only be better if the gremolata was more spread out more on the plate because in bites it became slightly overpowering.

Lastly is dessert so we picked one of each of the two desserts offered.

The Dessert in the front is the Peach Brioche Bread Pudding with Bourbon Praline Brown Sugar Streusel. I never tried a pudding like this before. It has many different textures of crunch, pudding and sort of a dense rich texture. The flavors were very spot on and were fireworks in the mouth. The perfect balance of sweet to salt good flavors and tang. It was just right.

Didn’t have all the bells and whistles of the Bread Pudding but not a thing wrong with the Brookie (cookie dough baked into a brownie) Sundae. It was delicious and anybody would enjoy it.

Parking is on the street. Don’t fall for the $6.00 parking next door unless you are handicapped or have shoes on your feet that hurt.  A free parking garage is only a short block away.

Cowboy Ciao is Worth a Fork!

UPDATE*****NOW CLOSED for Business

For more information on Cowboy Ciao please visit www.CowboyCiao.com