Howdy’s, in Longsight, lays on its theme with a trowel. Actually, what’s bigger than a trowel? A spade. It shovels it on with a spade. It buries you in Wild West nicknacks and cowboy slang everywhere from the neon signs all over the walls to the stuff on the menu.
It was at one time The Huntington pub, a place more likely to be the site of a saloon-style brawl like in the actual Wild West than not, with bottles flying and bar stools being turned into matchwood. Back then - how to put it politely? - it lacked curbside appeal.
Now you can’t miss it. Having opened just before Christmas, a huge yellow sign bellowing HOWDY warms the cheeks and keeps the birds up at night. This is the fourth Howdy’s, and the small chain’s first gunfight on this side of the Pennines, with branches already rooting and in all likelihood tooting as well in Bradford, Pudsey and Huddersfield. It’s not its first rodeo.
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But on a rainy Monday in January, and even with the best will in the world, pulling up in the carpark didn’t conjure hitching up your horse to some distant outpost in rural Wyoming. Saloons didn’t generally have those waterfall windows in the late 1800s, for example.
Nonetheless a sign instructs me to ‘giddy up my tastebuds’, so I think I’ll do my best to get into the spirit of it. And showing admirable commitment, everyone in there is sporting a cowboy hat and a gingham shirt.
And I include every member of the staff in the kitchen too. Not an un-stetsonned head in the whole place, and a couple of spares hanging up on hooks on the way in suggest that if you want one yourself, you can probably ask.
There are booths and long tables, and two ‘jail’ sections for seating, perhaps for relatives or family members that you simply don’t like very much. A nice touch and one that could be well considered in most restaurants. And for a Monday, it’s decently busy, given the current economic situation facing many.
The menu is absolutely riddled with western movie puns. The ‘Forty Guns’ burgers are the big ones, ranging from 11.95 ‘bucks’ (the whole menu is in bucks) at the top end to 6.95, including fries. There are ‘Unforgiven steaks’. The sides are ‘The Wild Bunch’.
There is also a full menu of curries, karahi to korma, dubbed the menu’s ‘Apache Indian’ section. But it’s the ‘Gold Rush’ section which catches the eye - a range of steaks, burgers and chops which are laden with edible 24 carat gold leaf.
Sadly, on this Monday evening, there has indeed been a rush on, and the kitchen doesn’t have any precious metals with which to emboss my dinner. It saved the wallet some trauma certainly. A wagyu sirloin dripping with gold will set you back 40 bucks, though for a wagyu, that’s actually pretty respectable. They’d usually be considerably more.
Some of the messaging is a bit thrown together. I order the ‘Sizzling Lone Ranger Chops’. The Lone Ranger didn’t ride a sheep, as I remember, but these are definitely lamb or mutton and thankfully not the animal he’s more synonymous with, who was called Silver.
They’re very good, beaten flat, rubbed aggressively with spice and charred. Couldn’t fault them, and for 6.95 bucks, fine value. The rest was a bit of a mixed bag.
Chicken wings, which like the chops were served on a hot skillet, were a bit mean. They were the ‘wingettes’ or the ‘flats’ rather than the ‘drumettes’, so the small end of the wing with the two bones, and not the generous larger end that you always want. Note to all chicken establishments - no one ever really wants the wingette.
The burgers too were basic pub standard, a bought-in fried chicken patty with cheese and some crushed up nachos on a bun only just the right side of stale. The Django Unchained Burger fared a little better, with two beef patties, turkey bacon, nachos (again) and cheese.
The loaded fries need work. Just frozen food service steak cut chips with pale melted cheese and jalapenos chucked on. Kids will probably love it here. Grown ups, even those with a John Wayne fixation, will likely just tolerate it.
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