By Morgan Mosley
MURFREESBORO,
Tenn. – Entrepreneur Rooster Beane
opened the second location for his restaurant Rooster's Lone Star Barbeque and
Steakhouse on Feb. 27 in the previous location of 3 Brothers Deli and Brew
house, right off the Square.
Beane
is originally from Smyrna, Tenn., but he moved to Texas in the late 1970s where
he later signed with the Dallas Cowboys to play kicker and offensive
guard. His experience with Texas-style
barbeque started while cooking for parties that he hosted. The food was so
popular amongst his friends that he decided to try out his own restaurant,
which he has been doing for the last nine years. He opened his first “Roosters” location in
2010 in downtown Nashville.
Rooster's
goal is to provide his customers with the best service in town. His restaurant
is a family-oriented business that is “kid friendly,” but the doors are open to
anyone.
“They are going to have the best food,” he
said. “There is never any trouble here and there won't be. I promise you that.”
The
menu offers a wide selection of Texas-style dishes, including chicken, sausage,
ribs and steaks, but their specialty is their tender, flavorful smoked
brisket.
“The
main difference in Texas Barbeque and Tennessee Barbeque is the beef brisket,
where in Tennessee, the most common type is pork,” he said.
They bring it in raw, put on their own special
dry rub, and smoke it for 24 to 26 hours, or “low and slow.” They also have
brisket wraps and brisket tacos. Their signature “Texas Sushi” features a jalapeno pepper stuffed with pepper-jack
cheese and smoked all-beef sausage, which is immediately wrapped in brisket
before being served. Another popular
dish is their Shrimp Diablo, which is a jalapeno stuffed with shrimp and
cheese, all wrapped in bacon. All of the
food is smoked, except for the fried foods like okra and french fries. They
even have a veggie-quesadilla and other grilled vegetables for those who do not
eat meat. They have 10 draft beers,
including the Texas favorite, Shiner Bock.
Their full menu can be viewed at www.roostersbbqnashville.com.
Covering
the walls is Texas-style décor, for a Texas-style restaurant. They say that everything is bigger in Texas,
which is something that Beane wanted to incorporate into his food.
“Our portions are bigger,” said Beane. “Our prices are reasonable for the portions
that you get.”
There
are some nightly specials which are meant to cater to larger crowds, including
$5 half-pound Texas Burger Monday, $2 Taco Tuesday (chicken, catfish or
brisket), 50-cent Wing Wednesday, and 2-for-1 Thirsty Thursday. On Friday they
do their “Great Balls of Fire”, which includes shots of Fireball whiskey, homemade
meatballs, and “calf-fries”, which are actually, for lack of a better term,
bull balls.
“We
are selling about 40 to 50 pounds of bull balls a week right now,” said
Beane. “In Texas and Oklahoma, they are
real big. I do have a couple of places that I do go back to when I am there,
and the reasoning is for the calf-fries. People, if they could just get the
vision out of their mind of what they are, they would be better off because, I
mean, the taste of them. They are some of the best things that we have on our
menu.”
“I've never tried one before this job, but
they really are not as bad as I thought they would be,” said Jason Hardin, a
server at the restaurant.
Rooster's
location in downtown Nashville has been featured on the Travel Channel's “Man
vs. Food” show with guests the Low Cash Cowboys and Vince Gill (one of Beane's
good friends) for his 72-ounce steak challenge.
The challenge involves eating a 72-ounce sirloin with a baked potato,
salad and Texas toast. If you eat it all
within an hour, you get the meal for free, and if you do not finish, it costs a
whopping $72.
“We have had eight winners and 136 losers so
far, but we do sell it a lot of times to a table of four, five or six to split
it up,” said Beane. “We haven't brought in our steaks yet (to this location),
because I have to build out the kitchen a little bit. Once we get that done, we can start the
challenge in Murfreesboro.”
Beane
has big plans for the future of his new restaurant. He is currently building a Cantina Beer
Garden in the long-time empty space besides the building that should be open to
guests around the middle of May. This, Beane says, will allow the restaurant to
seat 200-250 people inside and outside.
He plans to have live music in the garden, including a live festival
scheduled for May 18. Eric Stewart, an artist who played with Peter Frampton
for five or six years, is supposed to headline the event. The music will range from country to rock n'
roll. He plans to have more local
artists during the week, and some bigger headliners for the weekend.
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