I was having a much-needed adult beverage on the patio at the Cowgirl not so long ago, when I noticed light coming from an unfamiliar door. At first I thought I'd merely had one too many adult beverages, but no, there were people behind this door and they were playing pool. Later, during daylight hours, I called and confirmed that yes, the Cowgirl now has a billiards room. It opened about a month ago in the building that formerly housed one of the many Double Take consignment shops on the same block. Now when you amble down Guadalupe between WilLee's and Cowgirl, you see not just cowboy boots artfully arranged in an expensive-looking still life, but cowboy boots attached to a hipster attempting to smoke a cigarette, order another and sink the nine ball all at the same time.
The handful of tables here are coin-operated, not rented by the hour, and they're run as challenge tables. Tuck your quarters under the bumper and you take on the winners in
the next game. The room, which is connected to the restaurant only through a patio door, opens at 1 pm and gets cocktail service starting at 7 pm. If you want drinks before 7 pm, you'll have to lasso a waiter on the patio. Unfortunately, on nights when the bar has a cover, you'll have to pay the door guy (he sits in the entryway at Guadalupe and Aztec) even if you only want to play pool.
The following morning I had a rather disappointing breakfast at Sol Café with a group of friends. Right next door to El Farol was this cute little café with a pleasantly shady patio, beckoning us for OJ and eggs. The chef is Vikki Nulman, who previously ran The Canyon restaurant across the street.
We started off with drinks, including a glass of mint lemonade ($2), which was indeed pleasantly minty, but for some reason included minced bits of mint leaves in the glass. It sure looks pretty to have bright green speckles in your lemonade, but I'd rather not have those same bright green speckles all over my teeth. I spent the whole meal laughing and talking, then worriedly asking my girlfriends, "Is there green shit in my teeth?" I'd prefer just a sprig of leaves as garnish. Less worry.
I was excited to order potato pancakes ($7.95), one of my favorite dishes. Too often these are reserved for a Chanukah treat, but potato pancakes are actually killer for breakfast-when they're done well, that is.
Look, they're just fried potatoes, right? Like french fries, potato pancakes must be cooked properly and served immediately, otherwise they're practically inedible. If cooked over too much heat, the pancakes burn before cooking through. Too little heat and they soak up oil like a sponge before ever browning. That's what happened here. They were pale gold, like those barely cooked hashbrowns at cheap diners. The onions mixed in with the potatoes hadn't had a chance to cook at all, leaving a strong flavor of raw onion, and each bite released an unpleasant spurt of oil. I choked them down by scraping the cooked outer layer off the soggy inner layer and dotting liberally with sour cream and applesauce. A side order of bacon was so overcooked that the strips shattered with the first bite and tasted like charcoal.
The good news is that a simple breakfast of egg, bacon and toast ($4.95) seemed to come out just fine (including bacon that was overcooked, but at least not charred). The migas (a combination of eggs, corn tortillas, beans and pico de gallo, $8.95) were also respectable, although they seemed to be made with leftover tortilla chips instead of fresh corn tortillas. I know a lot of people make migas with tortilla chips, and it's probably an efficient way of doing things, but they're gonna get soggy anyway, so why add 10 grams of fat to your breakfast when you don't have to?
Overall, the group thought breakfast was just OK. The atmosphere out on the patio and in the beautiful dining room is extremely pleasant, and the service is friendly, but I probably wouldn't do it again, just because I'm still bitter about my greasy, pale potato pancakes. I've since heard good things about the burgers Sol Café serves at lunch and dinner, so perhaps I'll try it at another time of day.
Cowgirl BBQ
319 South Guadalupe St.
982-2565
www.santafenow.com/rest/cowgirl
11 am-2 am Monday-Friday, 8:30 pm-2 am Saturday, 8:30 am-12 am Sunday
Sol Café
802 Canyon Road
989-1949
9 pm-8 pm Monday-Thursday, 9 am-9 pm Friday-Saturday, 9 am-4 pm Sunday
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