Cattlemen’s

Where Cattlemen Eat

Surrounded by what once was the largest livestock trading center on earth, Cattlemen’s is the consummate cowboy steak house. The original dining area maintains its old lunch counter, where brokers, haulers, and buyers come for breakfast of chicken fried steak starting at six a.m.

Cowboys vs. Cattlemen

In the South Dining Room, which was added in the 1950s, spacious upholstered booths accommodate big spenders. 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 do not wear buckaroo attire. They wear suits and ties, apparently to distinguish them from common cowboys who work for wages. These gents want you to know they are cattle ranchers who can afford a blue-ribbon steak.

Top-Of-The-Line Sirloin Steak

At the pinnacle of goodness on Cattlemen’s menu stands 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. You hardly need the steak knife provided. A butter knife would do the job. But how one’s mouth waters to feel the keen steel glide through beef that, although tender, has real substance. You are forking up red meat with character. It proves you are in a real cowboy steak house.

When You Crave Testicles, This Is The Place

Steak soup is wonderful: lusty mahogany brown and crowded with vegetables, beef, and lamb fries. Lamb fries are the polite term used to designate gonads. In fact, testicles rate as a highly-regarded delicacy in much of the West. When cowboys castrated young livestock on the range, they treated themselves to a testicle-fry at the end of the day. Like much deep-fried food, lamb fries’ breading makes the difference. The organ meat inside the crust delivers a rich, luxuriously sweet flavor reminiscent of sweetbreads.