Cowboy Prime — Restaurant in Midland

My husband took me to this fine Dining experience for Valentine’s Day! We had reservations at 7:45 , we got there at 7:35 and were told they were running 30 minutes behind . Well over a hour later we got seated. I myself don’t understand why we made reservations and had but went with it . We ordered the giant meatball for appetizer , it was just a meatball with a hint of spice on the backend . I ordered the Canadian lobster and my hubby a prime NY steak . Now be careful when you order , your sides are not included . Hubby had baked potato & asparagus and I had Yukon mash & Mac & cheese . The steak was slightly over cooked but tender and seasoned well . The lobster was just lobster with some garlic and butter on the side . The Yukon potatoes were just that , no seasoning no butter just a few green things sprinkled on top. The Mac & cheese was Mac & cream, the noodles were moosh and it didn’t taste like cheese at all just cream . Hubby said the asparagus was good , but that half of a baked potato was dry (I poured my butter from the lobster on top) it had melted cheese & a literal slice of bacon folded on top . For dessert I had chocolate molten cake with raspberry sorbet . The molten was not warm and didn’t ooze like it should when I cut into it , the sorbet was awesome though . Hubby had an apple crisp and it was awful, it tasted like pure clove and nutmeg . Our main waitress was very hit or miss . We waited quite awhile for drinks and for the check and then to pay . The people who served the food were different from the waitress . Now for the horrible atmosphere! This is NOT fine dining … they played club techno music the whole time . Hubby and I couldn’t even hear the waitresses or each other . We could hear the drunk lady sitting across the room though . Our table was in front of a huge glass window and we felt like animals at a zoo during feeding time . If you are tall the tables sit very low and it is just very uncomfortable. You can’t stick a dead rose vase at a table and call it fine dining . The floors look like the floors at that place you throw peanuts on the ground . People were dressed in workout attire and bring 6 kids (there is NO kids menu) with them . All in all , this is a very expensive hang out .. there are two bars , one on each side . Nothing matches , the chairs , the tables , the bar and floors are all different . My husband feels so bad that he made me wait for this . So if you got some money to spend to hang out at the local bar with techno music , this is your place . You don’t need to dress up , the wait staff all wear jeans or shirts for dresses . The manager did give us our appetizer & first drinks & the desserts off our bill and gave my hubby a gift card for next visit . Bill was...

It was terrible. The food did NOT justify the cost. We went for our anniversary and everything was so bad. We tried a little bit of everything. We did have a reservation. We were seated and our waitress asked for our drinks right away, we asked for a few minutes to look at the menu and decide on our drinks and she seemed irritated or something. She never came back. Another waiter walked by and asked if we had been helped and we said yes but hadn’t seen her for a bit. This other waiter went and grabbed her for us. I asked for a drink recommendation and mentioned I like sweet drinks, she suggested something floral. It tasted like perfume. They have 3 appetizers listed on the menu and we asked for 1 of them. She said they were all out. This made no sense to us since they only had 3 options and our reservation was before dinner time. We asked for another appetizer and she said she would go check if it was available and asked if we had a backup. I said there are only 3 options on the menu. She went to go check and came back and said it was available. We waited an hour for our food. It was not busy. Our appetizer was the octopus, it’s really expensive and you get a small portion of octopus on top of some really weird looking and tasting potatos. I didn’t like the octopus but it was the first time i have tried octopus so I don’t know. She took our silverware when she picked up our appetizer. When our steaks came out we asked for silverware and she brought us a tiny knife that we really struggled to cut our steaks with. Not sure if it was meant for that. The truffle fries tasted like dry regular fries. We ordered our steaks medium and they came out very rare. We told the waitress and I’m guessing someone who was the manager came along and offered to take them back and cook them longer but we declined because we are weird about people taking our food after we complain. Plus the steaks were terrible in general. Had absolutely no flavor. We had ordered the bone-in ribeye. It was just a cooked steak. No flavor, nothing special. She seemed annoyed and she offered a complimentary dessert and we got the baked Texas. I was not a fan of that either. The manager came back and asked how it was and we said it was fine because we just wanted to get out of there at that point. Pretty sure I heard her walk off and say “awkwaaard”. I guess she could tell we were lying about it being ok. We did get to-go boxes for our steaks because we were gonna try and re-cook them at home but we ended up throwing them away and decided it wasn’t worth our time to try and salvage them....

A four-star rating is earned due to incremental ratings being unavailable. A true rating would fall somewhere between 3.5 and 4. This is still a very new restaurant and I want to chalk up some of the service issues to that.

Initially, the service was severely lacking. Took approx. 15-20 minutes for anyone to come take our drink order and, on more than one occasion, our table was confused with another. Also noticed on several occasions, members of the staff wandering aimlessly trying to remember/locate the proper table. However, if I'm being objective, I would have to admit the service got better once our entrees hit the table. Any requests we made or refills needed arrived in a fairly respectable timeframe. Unfortunately, you only get one chance at a first impression.

The atmosphere of the restaurant was interesting. Obviously, there is a desire to be recognized as a serious, elegant fine dining restaurant. However, that simply is not the way it feels. And as I write this, I'm not exactly sure how to describe it. The musical selection (although many songs I actually enjoy) just didn't seem to fit. Overall, it seemed to somehow straddle a line between elegant restaurant and trendy lounge.

So what about the food? Everyone but myself had caesar salads to start and they all expressed great satisfaction with it (except for the anchovies that are served on it). The grilled octopus appetizer was absolutely incredible but, the entrees were all pretty average. We didn't hate any of them but, we didn't love any either. They were just "pretty good."

Overall, the experience was good but underwhelming. As I mentioned, we're giving them the benefit of the doubt at this point that maybe they are still working out some of the kinks. We do plan on giving it another chance in a few months and hopefully, I'll be able to write a more glowing review.

Dishes Pictured: Grilled Spanish Octopus, Australian Wagyu Striploin, Canadian Lobster Tail, Seared...