Cattlemen's

1309 S. Agnew, Oklahoma City, OK - (405) 236-0416

Overview Reviews(2) Rate Restaurant Upload Photos Bookmark Email

Posted By Michael Stern on June 11, 2008 12:18 PM

Surrounded by the largest livestock trading center on earth, Cattlemen’s is the consummate western steak house. The original dining area maintains its old lunch counter, where brokers, haulers, and buyers come for breakfast of steak or brains and eggs starting at six a.m. In the South Dining Room, which was added in the 1950s, there are spacious upholstered booths; one entire wall features an immense, illuminated panoramic transparency of a herd of black angus cattle with two men on horseback watching over them. Curiously, the mounted cowherds are not dressed in buckaroo attire. They wear suits and ties, apparently to distinguish them from common cowboys who work for wages. These gents are cattle ranchers who can afford a blue-ribbon steak.

Top-of-the-line on Cattlemen’s menu is a sirloin steak as fancy as anything served on the white-clothed tables of New York’s steak row or in the premier beef houses of Chicago, Omaha, and Kansas City. It is a boneless crescent of meat that comes from the kitchen alone on a white crockery plate, surrounded only by a puddle of its translucent pan juice. It is charred on the outside, but not drastically so, and you can see by its glistening, pillowy form – higher in the center than around the rim – that this hefty slab has been seared over hot flame. Cattlemen’s provides each customer a wood-handled knife with a serrated blade. The blade eases through the meat’s crust and down into its warm red center – medium-rare, exactly as requested. You don’t really need the sharp edge – a butter knife would do the job – but it sure is mouth-watering to feel the keen steel glide through beef that, although tender, has real substance. This is beef with corn-fed character.

Two other specials worth knowing about: steak soup, which is lusty mahogany brown and crowded with vegetables, beef and lamb fries. The latter are testicles that are sliced, breaded, and deep fried. Gonads are a highly-regarded delicacy in much of the West; when young livestock is castrated on the range, it is traditional for cowboys to fry their harvest as a treat at the end of the day. Cattlemen’s lamb fries are served as an appetizer: a mound of them on a plate with a bowl of cocktail sauce for dipping and a half a lemon to squeeze on top. They are earthy-tasting inside their golden crust, the exquisite organ meat quivery and moist, with nut-sweet savor.

Overall Rating

Presidential Cut Steak

Steak Soup

Strip Sirloin

Lamb Fries

Steak Burger

22 out of 22 people found the review helpful. Was it helpful to you?

No Yes

Posted By Bill LeGallee on March 12, 2011 1:35 PM

While I admit they serve the best steak I've ever had, and for that alone they deserve their notoriety, I don't consider this a Roadfood establishment. The steak is a deal at $25. However, the remainder of the menu lacks luster. Accompaniments include uninspiring potato options and a standard cafeteria-style salad of iceberg lettuce with dressing from a bottle.

The place is inexplicably popular with locals, and as a visitor I marveled at a fascinating cross-section of Oklahoma's socioeconomic strata. I found the 30-minute wait in the "holding tank" upstairs entertaining, though I have to wonder if the resemblance to a cattle-pen was intentional given the proximity to the stockyards.

Overall Rating

Presidential Cut Steak

Strip Sirloin

0 out of 1 people found the review helpful. Was it helpful to you?

No Yes