With its combination of cowboy history and modern quirk, it has something to satisfy every mood. It is the home of the Horny Toad, Big Earl’s Greasy Eats, and the Town Dump, and on a recent Saturday, we discovered Bryan’s Black Mountain Barbecue and The Lazy Lizard Consignment Store.
Bryan’s also has, according to Phoenix Magazine, one of the Phoenix area’s Top Twenty-One Sandwiches--the pulled spaghetti squash on a bun with barbecue sauce. I give the restaurant credit for trying to accommodate vegetarian diners, but I will take a pass on this. I get a mental image of eating mashed potatoes on a roll, and it isn’t pretty. But our recent lunch satisfied our carnivore instincts.
The menu is short with pulled pork, pulled chicken, and brisket sandwiches joining the spaghetti squash – with your choice of one side. Platters include barbecue chicken, ribs, and the aforementioned meats as either single meats or combos. And sides include baked potato salad, olive cole slaw, fries, beans, and chips.
For Chuck it was the pulled pork sandwich with fries and an order of the beans. My choice was the pulled chicken with baked potato salad and olive cole slaw.
The sandwiches are advertized as containing a quarter of a pound of meat, but I would swear that both of ours vastly exceeded that quota. In both cases, the meat had been smoked just enough to give a real wood-smoked flavor without obscuring the natural taste of each meat. It was pulled into large chunks and not into smaller shreds, again letting you taste the meat. In both cases, the meat was moist and tender. Also, the meat had not been mixed with the sauce and, therefore, was not overwhelmed by the sauce.
The sides were a mixed bag. Chuck’s fries were quite good, as was my olive cole slaw. The latter was a shredded slaw mixed with green olive bits in a light creamy dressing. If you are not an olive fan, you probably wouldn’t like this. I, on the other hand, love olives, and so I loved this slaw variation. My potato salad tasted great with a sour-cream-based dressing, but some of the larger potato chunks weren’t totally cooked. When the plastic fork won’t pierce the potato, it needs a longer cooking time.
We agree that our sandwiches (did I mention that they came on toasted buns?) earned 5.0 Addies with the sides only earning 4.0 Addies. But Bryan's is certainly a spot to which we’ll return on our next visit to Cave Creek, AZ.
We had parked half a block away from the restaurant, so
The store was very crowded, mainly with locals who were getting caught up on the town's current events.
I didn't ask.
He had returned to "Earth-Tone Man."
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