BBQ Fusion // Rooster's Roadhouse
As if through strategic market research or just pure blind luck, Rooster’s Roadhouse fills (or rather just diverts) the significant void in the Denton market of barbeque. While newcomer Gold Mine is working through some kinks and the mainstay of Metzler’s is honestly a better destination to pick up a 6-pack than anything else, Rooster’s runs circles around the competition the way the New Orleans Saints would playing in the NFC East.
Inebriated with tin and neon and small paper menus with stains of oil and barbeque sauce, Rooster’s is a haven of glutton and grease – a place so staunchly unconcerned with health and saturated fats that they serve a double cheeseburger stacked between two grilled cheese sandwiches - as if mere buns were an affront to their stomachs.
Even the veggie sandwich (which embodies a bit too much of the ‘grease is good’ eidos of the place) comes with what I believe amounts to an entire bag of shredded cheese melted on top, (not to mention a side of house-made chips or fries) further cementing Rooster’s as a place where diets go to die and cholesterol and cheap beer go to thrive.
In this day and age of crossbreeding culinary cuisines and Frankenstein-foodie creativity, I think it’s fair (appropriate even) to label Rooster’s, with its burger dive-meets-barbeque menu, as BBQ fusion. The idea of the traditional meat-plate-and-sides is alluded to, but the real draw here is with the burgers and sandwiches that blend (or rather slap together) both traditional American and BBQ standards.
The Rooster’s Sloppy Joe ($5.49) is made with smoked brisket and ground beef while the King Brisket Burger ($9.95) has too many ingredients to list, but all you need to know is that it’s a triple-decker with a beef patty and brisket served two ways all under the same roof (bun).
For slightly more conservative eaters, the Pulled Pork Sandwich ($6.25) and the PIT Sandwich ($7.95) both come highly recommended by myself, but both of which come with their house-made chips, which if substituted (which I always do for either a side of okra, fries or onion rings dubbed ‘Rooster Tails’) just know that you’ll be tacking on an extra $2. For those of you bad with numbers, that’s one Lone Star.
However, perhaps the best thing I’ve eaten here is the Red Neck Sushi ($6.95), chopped brisket with cheese and sweethots wrapped in a grilled tortilla and served tongue-in-cheek sushi style. For all of Roosters’ gargantuan, napkin-required sandwiches and burgers, sometimes it’s the little things – a quaint appetizer, the comfort of a really cold, bad-tasting beer – that keeps me coming back. Or maybe it’s because if I want some good barbeque, there’s really no other choice.
// chase
