Feta Cowboy — Restaurant in Tempe

5/24/25: Short version - just happened to find this place while running some morning errands so decided we'd hit it for lunch. There's plenty of parking, the portions are huge, and I was super excited to see their containers are compostable! Except for the lids, which sucks, but it's a start. There's only one size for drinks & that's super duper large, I'm guessing 44 oz or more. The food was very good. It's not an overly large place so I can see how seating could be difficult to find during their busy hours. There is a substantially sized patio on the south end, and yes, I saw misters. They were not on which I attribute to no one sitting out there.

Long version - You walk in the door & there is a stand immediately in front of you with the menu (it looked like their electronic menus above the ordering counter were on the fritz). To the right is the trash bin, also where the metal trays go when you're finished. This is a bad set up because as we witnessed, people coming in were congregating in front of the door reading their menus and blocking other people from getting in.

We at least stepped aside to a table to stay out of the way until we decided on what to order. You follow the red line of tiles to place your order. It is a wide enough aisle that you could line up there AWAY FROM THE DOOR to read the menu, and other patrons can sneak by you to place their order.

The food set up reminded me of YC'S Mongolian Grill, in that there are labels for the dishes you are looking at. You do not load your own trays, however, the people behind the counter do. I only point this out because I was too busy looking at the food that I didn't notice until later the labels until later. There was music playing, and although it was not overly noisy inside, I could barely hear the gal behind the counter asking me if I wanted this or that. She had to repeat herself a number of times, until I got frustrated & just kept saying yes, not knowing what I was agreeing to.

This is why you should be aware of the labels, so you can know what you are agreeing to, or know what to say no to. Better yet, give the servers megaphones so you can hear them. I feel for any customer who has a hearing impairment and tries to order.

As it happens, whatever I agreed to for the Spicy Chicken Bowl was delicious. It was def spicy, but not overly so that it burned my mouth; it did, however, limit how much I could eat in one sitting. Point of note: the spices in the bowl did not go well with the pink lemonade; it left a slightly bad taste in my mouth. :-) You know how drinking water after eating cantaloupe tastes funny? It was like that.

My sister thoroughly enjoyed her Brisket Kimchi Burrito. She, too, had a hard time hearing the gal behind the counter.

Although not an extensive menu, we both agreed it's a place worth visiting again to try something different. There was no dessert or drinks listed on the menu so know this: at the register there was baklava, a pistachio cookie, and my sister says a choc chip cookie. Don't quote me on that though, I am only 100% certain of the baklava.

The drinks were self-serve, Pepsi products. There was also root beer, the pink lemonade mentioned earlier, as well as a green tea, black tea, and I think regular tea (all teas...

A+ for concept, F- for execution.

Went after they had been open for over a month but it was so unorganized it seemed like the first day. We ordered a spicy chicken bowl and asked for no hot honey sauce but plain shawarma chicken instead. The guy looked at us and said not to worry it comes with chicken shawarma standard. Ok. Shortly after they are dumping the hot honey sauce all over the chicken anyways. The first guy also scooped the wrong rice for the bowl. It was supposed to have calrose rice(yellow) but he put basmati (white). When we pointed this out to him, he said we were wrong and the white rice was the calrose rice and assured us it was correct (even though the signs clearly showed otherwise) but we let it go. In our group we also ordered two salmon bowls. Each bowl has a lot of ingredient and the staff had NO IDEA what was supposed to go in the bowls. At least 5 ingredients were completely left out until it was pointed out individually each time and they had to go back and add them. Every time we pointed out they missed something they acted like we were requesting a special item but we were literally standing there with menus in hand reading what was supposed be in the bowls and literally had to point to the menu and say “no, it says this is supposed to be in there.” - this literally happened over and over again. Not to mention they got so confused that they put a couple ingredients in there twice (like the yogurt sauce which had to be scooped out while eating because there was so much).

Service was slow, unorganized, and very frustrating. The staff seemed completely untrained on ANYTHING on the menu. These entrees have a lot of ingredients, but what’s the point if staff have no idea of half of them? They even had little cheat cards in front of them so i have no idea how so many things were getting missed. We were in disbelief at how chaotic it was to get a couple standard menu items. My recommendation to them is not offer so many ingredients If you can’t be consistent with putting them in without being babysat the whole time.

Now to the FOOD. Greek salad was basic. Nothing special, but fine. Ordered the cowboy kebab on the side (which took forever and had to ask for 3 separate times) it was fine but a very small portion, it was 3 small little balls of meat. Now for the salmon- don’t even bother ordering. It was extremely overcooked, dry, and hard. The spicy chicken bowl actually had good flavor- no complaints on the one but not wowed by it. The food wasn’t good enough to deal with the whole experience of going through the ordering process again so I won’t be back.

Really disappointed because we were excited to try it! I hope in the future they can tighten things up and maybe I’ll try it again. I recommend waiting until the staff is more trained and/or if you’re going to order just do a build your own item because otherwise I would have no confidence that the ingredients on the menu are actually getting in your order so at least with build your own you can tell them every exact thing along the way (which we had to...

Two great things in life: Feta (cheese) and Cowboys (and no, I'm not talking about the Dallas Cowboys --- eww).

Yeehaw!

It's "pita meets tortilla" at Feta Cowboy! From the owners of Pita Jungle, the new fast-casual concept combines Mediterranean and Tex-Mex flavors.

We had came during the soft opening and the owners were there being sweet as pie. Friendly, informative, and so gosh darn cute. Here's what we shared:

Norse Sea Salmon Bowl (Calrose rice, green lentils, lettuce mix, Norwegian salmon, zhug, labneh tzatziki, roasted cauliflower, Mediterranean pico, burst of herbs, citrus vinaigrette, hummus & zhug hummus, and chips): I don't recall having any chips in my bowl but I would have appreciated some texture! The flavors were delightful and meld well together. The rice was a bit too mushy though. I think they added too much water but it's not a deal breaker. I loved this delicious bowl and that salmon was so perfectly cooked. Absolutely flakey!

Brisket Kimchi Burrito (Tortilla, Calrose rice, Romano beans, brisket, sweet potatoes, FC pomegranate bbq sauce, chili oil, kimchi, and Monterey Jack with a harissa vinaigrette): I gotta be honest, this burrito could have used more texture. The rice was still the soggier rice so everything was on the mushier side. As a huge kimchi lover, the flavor of the unmistakable fermented spice was very low-key.

I'm excited to go back to Feta Cowboy! I've been waiting for so long, having seen them renovate as it's right next to my gym of EOS. I love the cow-print tiles, the green drapery, and I think they have a lot of potential. I need a...