Get your spurs out, urban cowboys — the rodeo is rolling into town! If you’re around Madison Square Garden this weekend, you’ll probably see more cowboy hats than Knicks caps as the seventh annual Professional Bull Riders Invitational kicks up dirt through tomorrow. The show, which has sold out three years in a row, pits 35 of the world’s top bull riders against each other for three “snot-spewing, bone-crushing, adrenaline-soaked” performances.
But you don’t have to follow the riders back to Texas: You can get your own taste of country-western culture right here in New York, with some new smokehouses, a mechanical-bull bar and even a sassy bunch of dancing gay cowboys.
FOR A RAUCOUS RODEO
If all that rootin’ tootin’ rodeo action at Madison Square Garden has you fired up to try it yourself, you don’t have to wrassle your own bronco. Just pop over to Viva Toro in Williamsburg, sporting Brooklyn’s only mechanical bull, which you can ride for $5. The Mexican saloon has become a popular spot for out-of-borough crowds from Manhattan and beyond.
Viva Toro is partnering with Professional Bull Riders this year, too: Many of the bull riders come by before and after the event, and the restaurant staff was invited to yesterday’s opening ceremony at the Garden. The bar staff recently named their in-house bull Pistol, in honor of Pistol Robinson, one of the first professional bull riders to visit the bar.
The restaurant was founded by husband-and-wife team Agustin Roman and Veronica Suriel, who were inspired by the Mexican restaurant Veronica’s father ran in Alphabet City until he died.
“When he passed away, my main goal was to continue that tradition and legacy,” says Suriel, who launched Viva Toro in June 2010.
The difference with Viva Toro compared to other mechanical-bull venues in the city, Suriel says, is that the vibe is more Latin-fusion. As such, the menu includes carne asada ($19), avocado fries ($9) and fajitas ($18 to $20).
188 Berry St., Brooklyn; 718-384-2138
FOR BREWS AND BRISKET
When the John Brown Smokehouse expanded to a bigger location in July, it added a backyard open during the warmer months, complete with a music stage and beer garden — but it kept the chalkboard and checkered red tablecloths old fans will remember. And you might even learn the secret to its famous burnt ends as you sip beer from a massive, 66-ounce boot ($27, below).
“It really is a great, laid-back place to hang out where you can talk to the pitmaster,” says head chef John Zervoulakos. “We’ll share our knowledge of barbecue with the customers.”
The restaurant serves “New York/Kansas City”-style barbecue, with a variation on the regular Kansas City style, combining vinegar and tomato bases with sugar, salt, pepper and secret spices.
The burnt ends — pieces from the top of the brisket that are a delicacy in KC-style barbecue and available for $12 a plate — are the speciality, but the restaurant also embarks on culinary adventures with lamb sausage ($9), foie gras ($18) and a PBLT: Pork belly, tomato and lettuce on Texas toast, a k a double-thick bread ($11).
10-43 44th Drive, Queens; 347-617-1120
FOR BROOKLYN-STYLE BARBECUE
With ceiling fixtures hanging from meat hooks, Fletcher’s Brooklyn Barbecue opened in the up-and-coming culinary corridor of Gowanus on Nov. 2 — just days after Hurricane Sandy ravaged the area — giving stranded neighbors a place to dine.
Growing up in Downtown Brooklyn, the only exposure Matt Fisher had to real barbecue was at off-the-highway local joints during road trips to visit family in Virginia and Florida. When he was in college upstate and saw a man cooking a full barbecue in half an oil drum in a parking lot, he realized there was only one way to get that kind of grub back home in Brooklyn.
“I was going to have to make it myself,” says Fisher, the executive chef and pitmaster. And thus the desire went from “a personal quest to total, all-out religious obsession.”
He spent years testing different recipes and woods before settling on a mix of Texas and Kansas City styles, using both vinegar and tomato glazes, mixed with the “diversity of Brooklyn’s multi-ethnic flavors” and cooked over maple and red oak.
The menu features St. Louis ribs ($24 per pound), coriander pork steak ($28 per pound) and sides such as baked beans and mac and cheese (above, $4 each).
433 Third Ave., Brooklyn; 347-763-2680
FOR A TASTE OF GRANDMA’S GRUB
Meghan Love and Jeff Lutonsky, the couple behind Mable’s Smokehouse, have lived in New York for more than a decade, but they’re no stranger to country folk. Their second date was to a rodeo on Long Island, and Lutonsky even has a cousin who is a professional tie-down calf roper in Apache, Okla.
As a result, the inside of their Williamsburg restaurant is the real deal: The farmhouse decor of wagon-wheel light fixtures and long wooden tables was inspired by Bet’s Country Ritz — the restaurant Lutonsky’s mother owned while he was growing up in Oklahoma in the ’80s. And the eatery is named after Lutonsky’s grandmother, Mable.
“This is our family tradition. We are doing something really authentic to our upbringing,” says Love. “We tried to build something that was really nostalgic to our youth.”
The recipe for Mable’s Oklahoma-style barbecue — an amalgam of Texas, Memphis and Kansas City traditions using a tomato-based sauce — is based on a recipe from grandma Mable. The grub includes sauce-slathered beef brisket and juicy St. Louis ribs, which come as a platter piled high with two sides and Wonder Bread to sop it all up ($14.95 to $16.95). Sides and snacks include heaping portions of pickled beets and a gooey serving of Velveeta queso ($5), which match perfectly with suds from the Brooklyn Brewery around the corner.
44 Berry St., Brooklyn; 718-218-6655
FOR LASSOING AND LINE-DANCING
If Coyote Ugly — the famous East Village saloon featuring sexy dancing bartenders — made boogying on the bar acceptable, Flaming Saddles aims to make it fab-u-lous.
The Hell’s Kitchen gay bar was launched in late 2011 by Chris Barnes and Jacqui Squatriglia, who made her mark as the creator and choreographer of those infamous sexy bartender dance steps at Coyote Ugly. At Flaming Saddles, sassy cowboy bartenders dance atop the bar every half-hour, turning the Wild West saloon into a showcase of chiseled New York bodies.
Barnes describes the space as an “old western kind of bordello look,” with longhorns on the wall, a butcher-block bar and an all-country-music jukebox. This mix has been a surprise hit hot spot among city folk — gay and straight alike — including, Barnes says, a big crowd from the Madison Square Garden PBR event every year.
“We were really surprised by how many transplants from the Dakotas, Dallas, Arizona live in the city,” he says. “When we first started, we left a couple pop songs on, thinking that not everybody is going to like country-western. The gay men from Texas and Oklahoma said, ‘Uh, uh — we don’t want Britney and Madonna on that jukebox!’ ”
793 Ninth Ave.; 212-713-0481