Cowboy Jack's — Restaurant in Apple Valley

TLDR: If you live south of the river like me, drive to the Bloomington location.

I've ate at the Cowboy Jack's Bloomington location a handful of times and always had good food and a good experience.

The one in AV is different. Instead of a rock/country music mix, it plays nothing but country. If you love excessively loud country music, eat there. I was there around noon on a Sunday (today), things weren't busy at all, but I couldn't hear my wife talking to me from across the table. I looked for a table further from speakers but there are speakers over every table. The server looked annoyed when we asked that it be turned down, but then the music was turned down to a level just below intolerable, so we thanked her and let it lie. I don't know....maybe you want country music drowning out your conversation. If that's your thing, I highly recommend the AV Cowboy Jack's.

I am not a demanding customer at all, and I never complain about slow service when the server is obviously busy. Our service was slow, but, as I mentioned, things were not busy. She was chatting with friends while my wife sat in need of water for around 10 minutes. I felt bad about asking her to join me there, because this was my idea.

The food was approaching okay. My sirloin steak salad sounded so good from the menu, and is actually what brought us there today. I woke up today thinking about how I'd like a delicious salad for lunch, but one that I didn't have to make, so when I found this salad on the menu I thought, alright, we'll go to the AV Cowboy Jack's. But the cook's idea of medium rare seems more like medium well, the meat and (alleged) bleu cheese dressing were bland, and there was far too much diced red onion for the amount of lettuce and cucumber. This makes me sound like a picky customer, but I swear I'm not. My wife's Buffalo Chicken Salad was similarly off: not enough lettuce, and the flavorless bleu cheese dressing was just sad.

This place is I think 6-7 miles from our house in Savage. The one in Bloomington is I think 8-9 miles from us. Next time, we'll drive the couple extra miles.

EDIT: Not to obsess, but how do you screw up bleu cheese dressing? It seems disrespectful, like someone tried this, detected the complete lack of bleu cheese flavor, and then thought, yeah, that's about right for our clientele. I've had better bleu cheese dressing from the understaffed Sonic near my house that always goofs...

Where to begin... I wouldn’t give this place one star, simply for the fact that the food was average. Everything else that happened this evening was a mess. Started off by walking in as first time customers with no one at the front to greet us, and we waited there for about 5 minutes. There were a few wait staff that had walked passed us during this time and did not acknowledge us. One of the (I assume) hostesses must have just been ending her shift as she grabbed her phone off the host desk and walked away, again not acknowledging us. Someone else walked in from the patio and up to the desk in front of us, and finally some girl walked up and asked what he wanted. She barely helped him with his issue and sent him on his way. When we walked up she kind of just looked at us as if we were bothering her and told us to just sit wherever after looking around. With a sour attitude to top it all off she said “I’ll bring you some menus too I guess” and followed us to a table that we had chosen and set the menus down. She walked away. The table was disgusting clearly not cleaned, and if you’re going to tell people to sit wherever instead of actually seating them, the open tables should be clean. So our waitress comes and takes our drink order. For the most part she was fine, but seemed very unfocused with her work. She rang up two of our three guests’ orders wrong, and blamed it on the kitchen staff saying that they were incredibly busy - there were maybe 5 or 6 tables that were seated and probably 15 people at the bar. We had 3 different people deliver our food as well. When she gave us our checks, she told us that she had been giving us Pepsi instead of cherry Pepsi in our refills. Not a huge deal normally, but she said “I just didn’t want to walk back to the screen to double check. I knew it was Pepsi but I wasn’t sure other than that”. Like if you’re gonna screw up, don’t admit it, and admit that you were too lazy to do your job correctly. I don’t know what is going on with their staff, but they all seemed lazy and uninterested in working, some of them had horrible attitudes with guests for no reason and the atmosphere made all three of us feel like we didn’t belong there. It was very unfortunate as we enjoy the Jacks at the MOA and were excited to have one closer to home. Unfortunately we will not be back and would rather make the drive to the mall where we get...

I have wanted to visit Cowboy Jack's for a few years. Last night was my first time dining there, and was a huge letdown. This is my honest review, can say confidently that my expectations are reasonable Our server was Lizzie, she was sweeter than corn syrup and gave good service.... no complaints there. The frequency she checked on us was not overbearing, she followed up 2-3 min after the expo team member brought out a plate. Our drink levels were monitored and refilled promptly. After an acceptable 15-20 minute wait (Friday evening) we were seated. Wife had a cocktail while we were waiting. A pleasant surprise her drink was not watered down or overpoured, it was a proper cocktail. We ordered our food, I wanted the Ribeye cooked medium, wife ordered the Brisket Platter; with a 12pc Honey Garlic wing order as a starter. Our server came back about 10-12 minutes later and told us that they didn't have Brisket, my wife switched her order to the Strawberry Feta salad with Chicken. A few minutes later, our server comes back (in full cringe mode). She informed me they were out of Ribeye cuts as well. Was going to pivot to the Rib Platter, then was told the Smoker was down, they had no smoked meat offerings at all. I switched my order to the NY Strip cooked medium. Our wings came out, they were decent. I had hoped that the wings would have been better. The salad was a basic bowl of lettuce, two strawberries that were halved, and a sparse sprinkling of Feta. It met the basic definition of a "salad", could have been a much better tasting dish with great presentation at little extra cost. The NY Strip Steak was a nice cut of meat. Unfortunately one end was very well done, the other had an isolated section with a small pink center. Missed the mark of a medium NY Strip in a big way. When good service is rendered, I'm happy to leave a good tip. The food was subpar for the type of restaurant Cowboy Jack's is. Lizzie was a great server, happily left her 18%. Overall I was disappointed with the experience at Cowboy Jack's. Had high hopes, it appeared to be a place I'd add to my list...