Advertisement

Food

Why Taste of the Cowboys in Frisco is one of North Texas' most delicious food festivals

There are two rules to food festivals:

  1. You will wait in line. And you will like it.
  2. You will Instagram/Snapchat/Twitter every moment of your experience, all while holding a cup of wine in one hand, two plates of food in the other. You only have two hands and no assistant/sous chef/significant other to hold your stuff and make sure you're getting nice natural light on your photos? Amateur.

Food festivals are one of the more delicious parts of being a food lover. They're also a hilarious exercise in multi-tasking, food consumption and socializing. As divine as it is to eat 27 small bites of food from well-known chefs around Dallas, it's also kind of hard.

Advertisement

Which is why Taste of the Cowboys on Sunday, May 7 in front of the sparkly new Ford Center at The Star in Frisco was so great.

Eat Drink D-FW

The latest food and drink reviews, recipes and info on the D-FW food scene.

Or with:

Each chef's table was labeled boldly with the name of the restaurant and the dish. With a quick scan left and right, you could decide yes to the mac and cheese with burnt ends, no to the clam and pork belly potato salad. At many other food fests, you wait in a long line, only to get up to the front and realize they're serving a dish you're not really into.

Advertisement

Speaking of lines: Taste of the Cowboys filled the venue perfectly. Once patrons got through relatively long lines at the admission windows, lines were nearly nonexistent for each table and food was available all evening.

There were no 30-minute waits for a tiny taste of food; no chefs whose infamous dishes were gone after the first five seconds. 

Dallas Cowboys mascot Rowdy poses with Aaron Valmont, chef at The Capitol Grill, at Taste of...
Dallas Cowboys mascot Rowdy poses with Aaron Valmont, chef at The Capitol Grill, at Taste of the Cowboys in Frisco.(Ashley Landis / Staff Photographer)

The ticket prices likely had something to do with that: Tickets ranged from $150 to $400, which probably contributed to smaller crowds and a more comfortable atmosphere. The whole shebang was a fundraiser for the North Texas Food Bank. I was given a free media pass.

Taste of the Cowboys offered generous wine pours, great little bites from chefs in the Dallas area and a totally Instagrammable outdoor setting on the turf in front of the Ford Center.

Advertisement

The best bite I had all night was Lockhart Smokehouse's maple glazed burnt ends sitting atop Sriracha cole slaw. Other restaurants that served interesting bites included Del Frisco's Double Eagle Steak House, which just opened a restaurant at Plano's Legacy West; Neighborhood Services (with restaurants in Addison and Dallas, and one at The Star in Frisco soon); and Earl's Kitchen + Bar, opening in Plano.

A rousing finale from country band Reckless Kelly capped off a pleasant evening for a good cause. If only every D-FW food festival could be so breezy.

Photos from Taste of the Cowboys in Frisco: