Urban Cowboy
4456 Limebank Rd., 613-604-4456, urbancowboyeats.com
Open: Monday and Tuesday 11 a.m. to 9 p.m., Wednesday and Sunday, 11 a.m. to 10 p.m., Thursday 11 a.m. to 11 p.m., Friday and Saturday 11 a.m. to midnight
Prices: mains $15 to $22
Access: no steps to front door or washrooms
When the Urban Cowboy food truck opened almost three years ago, it described its wares as “innovative Texas street food.” The menu, which changed daily, could list everything from halibut-cheek tacos in handmade corn tortillas to barbecue duck baguettes to the signature Belcher Burger, made of brisket rather than ground beef.
Since then, the Urban Cowboy brand has taken off, assisted by owner Layne Belcher’s long-time connection to Ottawa’s restaurant and sports scenes. His late father, Val Belcher, who was born in Houston, Texas, played for the Ottawa Rough Riders in the early 1980s. After he hung up his jersey a few years later, he was behind the Lone Star Texas Grill, a smashing late-’80s success, as well as several other restaurants. Naturally, Layne Belcher, now in his early 30s, would go on to work in restaurants and eventually sell food from his truck at Lansdowne Park as well as at Ottawa-area festivals.
More than a year ago, Urban Cowboy took over the Riverside South strip mall eatery that had been Indulge, a too-short-lived fine-dining restaurant, adding seven TVs tuned to TSN, a poster of John Wayne, cowboy boots, a steer skull and a popcorn machine in the process.
Belcher calls it Urban Cowboy headquarters. It’s also tempting to think of it as Son of Lone Star: a suburban, family-friendly sports eatery that supports good causes and local beer (Beau’s) and hosts live music on Wednesday nights.
We went to Urban Cowboy three times this month, and had some satisfying dishes, a few that were alright but could have been better, and some letdowns.
For me and two friends that I call the Meat Brothers, the lure of barbecued meats is irresistible. But at the same time, we set the bar high, with competition fare and the dishes at the Dinosaur-Bar-B-Que restaurants in the U.S. as our touchstones.
We had to take the Urban Cowboy Derby Platter ($45) for a spin, digging into the sampler’s pulled pork, beef brisket, half-rack of ribs, half a chicken and smoked sausage.
Nothing was great, but nothing was bad either. The balance of smoke to other flavours was good, but the differentiation of the flavours could have been greater. Best were the ribs, while the chicken was a touch dry. I’d prefer brisket to be sliced rather than chopped, à la pulled pork, but the latter is definitely a Belcher signature, dating back to when Val Belcher served brisket this way in his namesake burger, which is the top-seller on his son’s menu. I would have liked some sauce choices to go with the meats to spice or brighten them up.
We were more impressed with the side dishes, including some fine, bacon-enhanced mac ‘n’ cheese, some sweet, fluffy cornbread, and the crisp, tempura-fried sweet potato fries.
That visit, we weren’t that crazy about the flour-tortilla tacos ($20 for five) that featured battered shrimp from the keen-to-deep-fry kitchen or blackened catfish. They were a little muddled, flavour-wise, with accompaniments overshadowing proteins.
The menu labeled that soul-food-derived item a New Orleans specialty, which it isn’t, really. But the jambalaya ($20) was properly categorized, and not bad. The dish was well stocked with shrimp, chicken and, most flavourfully, smoked sausage. While the Creole aspect of the sauce needed more oomph and depth, I’ve had worse jambalaya elsewhere. The cornbread, again, was delicious.
At a third visit, we sampled house-made guacamole and tortilla chips ($9), which I would have liked better had the guacamole been more chunky and less creamy, as well as more bright and acidic.
A blackened catfish in a po’ boy sandwich ($16) had crossed over from blackened to somewhat singed and burnt, and the fries with it had none of the specialness of the premium sweet potato fries.
Better was the Belcher Burger ($16), heaped with chopped brisket. I would have liked to taste more beefiness asserting itself against the tangy tomato sauce, or even a less sauced, sliced brisket alternative. But I still liked the Urban Cowboy staple, as well as the “truck” salad of kale, greens, cherry tomatoes, corn, goat cheese and pumpkin seeds, although I like honey mustard vinaigrette to be less sweet.
If you think desserts improve with deep-frying, then the deep-fried Oreos, served with as much whipped cream as battered cookie, ($6) or deep-fried ice cream ($5) should do the trick.
I wonder: what would happen if other Ottawa food trucks followed Belcher’s lead and opened restaurants? How would they scale up? Would they ditch their equivalent of halibut-cheek tacos for something less distinctive and easier to mass-produce?
We’ll have to wait and see. For now, Urban Cowboy seems to be making a go of it where Indulge called it quits, serving more crowd-pleasing, if less fancy and impressive, dishes at prices that are also easier to stomach.
