My wife and I are standing under the Cattlemen’s sign everyone in our city knows and loves, its twinkling lights firing up North Main as they have for decades, that big fake cow just a few feet above our heads. Before going in, we’re pausing for a moment while I try to remember the last time I was here. Twenty years? Thirty years? All I remember is I took my parents to dinner here, then we walked over to Billy Bob’s to see a Willie Nelson concert. Yeah, must have been 30 years ago, now that I think about it.
Matter of fact, that was my first and only time to visit Cattlemen’s. It’s funny, you live in this city your whole life, and you only visit Cattlemen’s once? But, as I recall, the food and service were a little too rough around the edges for me, and I do like my edges rough sometimes. I think at that point, Cattlemen’s had established itself as one of the city’s premier tourist traps, not necessarily a place where locals go, and after our visit I knew chances would be slim that I’d go back.
Yet here I am, 30 or so years later, about to walk into the restaurant reborn. I’ll admit it: When word started circulating that Cattlemen’s was getting a multimillion-dollar makeover at the hands of Taylor Sheridan, I was a little apprehensive. I mean I love 1883 and all, but Fort Worth has learned, sometimes the hard way, that when one of our beloved institutions gets “reimagined,” its soul can be collateral damage. Whatever Cattlemen’s of yesterday lacked, it most certainly made up for with soul. That I remember…