{"id":787,"date":"2014-10-29T20:39:51","date_gmt":"2014-10-30T02:39:51","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.raecrothers.ca\/blog\/?page_id=787"},"modified":"2014-10-29T20:39:51","modified_gmt":"2014-10-30T02:39:51","slug":"eating-rattlesnake-at-sedonas-cowboy-club","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"http:\/\/www.raecrothers.ca\/blog\/eating-rattlesnake-at-sedonas-cowboy-club\/","title":{"rendered":"Eating Rattlesnake at Sedona’s Cowboy Club"},"content":{"rendered":"

I’m doing this restaurant review as a page so that it won’t show up in the main feed, as I know that it will squick a lot of people.<\/p>\n

In Sedona today, I passed by a restaurant called The Cowboy Club<\/a>, which announced on its bulletin board that it serves rattlesnake. One of my culinary bucket list items is to try snake meat, so I did some quick research into the restaurant’s quality and prices, was pleased with what I saw, and went in.<\/p>\n

There was only one rattlesnake option, an appetizer for $16 plus tax. I asked the server about it and she explained the dish to me thoroughly, saying that it could possibly make a full meal for someone. It actually sounded like a lot, so I decided to go ahead and order.<\/p>\n

The presentation was lovely and appetizing and the server explained everything to me. There is a sweet dipping sauce (I forget what was in it) to be paired with the two skewers of snake meat covered in a cilantro lime batter.<\/p>\n

Above the sauce is ‘southwest peanut butter’ to be slathered on the fried cilantro flat bread in the middle of the plate. Next to that on top is a riblet topped with BBQ sauce and below that is a sausage.<\/p>\n

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I dove right in with the sausage. It was very mildly flavoured and delicious. I mean, it’s sausage. Sausage by definition is scary stuff in a case made delicious with seasonings! I had a few bites and moved on to the skewers.<\/p>\n

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The batter was fine. I’m just not a fan of deep fried stuff. Inside the batter was very tender and moist meat with barely any flavour. It’s definitely nothing like chicken. I’ve had frog and that’s the closest I can get to describing the moist stringy nature of the meat and barest wisp of an aquatic flavour. Visually, the bits of skin were off putting, so I just closed my eyes. \ud83d\ude42<\/p>\n

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Finally, I tried the riblet. As the server said, it’s really there to prove that you are eating snake meat as you get a bit of the spine and tons of bones. It was a pain to eat and not very rewarding meat-wise. I felt like a real western gal as I picked and sucked at those tiny pointy rattlesnake bones! \ud83d\ude42 Thankfully, there were two nice long strips along the top of the backbone that really gave me a sense of the flavour. I like that the BBQ sauce did not completely mask the snake taste, but rather enhanced it.<\/p>\n

I alternated between all three presentations, finishing with the sausage, which was a very generous portion. I really enjoyed the snake meat and would most definitely try it again!<\/p>\n

But I’m afraid that the highlight of the meal was the flat bread and southwest peanut butter! OMG, I could have that for breakfast every day for the rest of my life and never get sick of it. The peanut butter was a little sweet and full of cumin and cilantro. I’m finally at the point where cilantro doesn’t ruin a meal for me and can sometimes enhance it. That was certainly the case today.<\/p>\n

I gave the server a slightly better than 20% tip, so the meal came to $21 even. It felt worth every penny, from the service, taste, quality of the food, and quantity. I came out of there stuffed<\/em>!<\/p>\n

Next culinary bucket list item: insects. I know I can knock that off the list in Mexico. I’m fine with the idea of eating the bugs, I just don’t feel like picking their legs out of my teeth…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I’m doing this restaurant review as a page so that it won’t show up in the main feed, as I know that it will squick a lot of people. In Sedona today, I passed by a restaurant called The Cowboy Club, which announced on its bulletin board that it serves rattlesnake. One of my culinary […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"parent":0,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","template":"","meta":{"footnotes":""},"tags":[],"class_list":["post-787","page","type-page","status-publish","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.raecrothers.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/787","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.raecrothers.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.raecrothers.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.raecrothers.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.raecrothers.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=787"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.raecrothers.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/787\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.raecrothers.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=787"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.raecrothers.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=787"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}