One Eyed Buffalo Is So Popular In Thermopolis, There Are 3 Locations In Town Of Less Than 3,000

Not too many tiny towns can boast that they have three of the same restaurant brand in one town, but one Wyoming town that can is Thermopolis.

The Hot Springs State Park neighbor has not just one, not two, but three locations under the One Eyed Buffalo Brewing Co. umbrella.

The restaurant is a humdinger with featured items like Filet Oscar — crab-topped steak — crab legs, authentic jagerschnitzel, tender prime rib and so many mac and cheese dishes that they have their own menu.

The restaurant lands in the top three choices in Thermopolis, according to aggregated TripAdvisor reviews, with most touting it as a “pleasant surprise” in a rural town where they had not expected to find such good food.

The satellites of One Eyed Buffalo are not shabby either. They include a tap house with a dozen or so craft beer selections, and a saloon that serves as a gaming lounge with Cowboy Skill games and Wyoming Downs.

These venues serve bar pizzas, but eventually the restaurant’s owner plans to expand that to include burgers and brats to go with the beers.

While this might seem like it’s the start of a great franchise, owner Jen Fisher has no plan to spread her restaurant empire beyond Thermopolis.

“I’ve got my hands full now,” she told Cowboy State Daily with a laugh. “We will just be focusing on making what we’ve built as successful as possible, with no plans to expand further.”

But she paused for only a second before laughing again and saying, “Of course, I’ve said that five times, so it’s not worked out well for me.”

Blame It On Chinese Food

Fisher was a police dispatcher in another life and comes from a family with deep roots in law enforcement. Dispatching is, if she had to work for someone else, her first choice.

But she also loves the restaurant business, even when she was just a waitress at a Chinese place in Douglas.

“That was my first job,” Fisher recalled. “And I washed the dishes and just kind of learned how to cook some of their dishes and stuff.”

Eventually, she and her husband built the Crooked Creek guest ranch in Dubois, and later owned a restaurant in Idaho. In Thermopolis, Fisher managed the Stone’s Throw, a restaurant at the Thermopolis Golf Course near Hot Springs State Park.

Many of One Eyed Buffalo’s recipes have come from the Stone’s Throw, including the jagerschnitzel, which is made with a brandied mushroom gravy. The recipe for that actually belonged to a German cook, Fisher said, who personally taught Fisher how to make it.

It was during her time at the Stone’s Throw that Fisher made the connection that would turn her into Thermopolis’ restaurant queen.

That connection was Darin Homer, owner of Homax Oil and Gas in Casper. He’s now her silent partner in One Eyed Brewing.

“He and his wife had bought a house here in town, outside of town, and they’re big golfers,” Fisher said. “And I was always their bartender. They would come in, and we just kind of got to know each other over the course of a few years.”

At that time, One Eyed Buffalo Brewery was owned by a friend of Fisher’s and was a frequent topic of discussion.

“Like man, that place is a little gold mine,” Fisher recalled telling him.

And his response was, “Well, if you ever want to, if it ever comes up for sale, let me know and we’ll do it.”

Not Just Bar Talk

The thing is, that may have sounded like bar talk, but it turned out Homer wasn’t really joking when he said that, however much it might have seemed so to Fisher at the time.

When the restaurant actually came up for sale in 2016, he reminded her of what he’d said before. He was all in.

And so it was that Fisher found herself with a champion and a new restaurant of her own.

“His ideas and everything have been very instrumental in helping to get these places built,” Fisher said. “And just the support from him has been amazing for the growth of this company.”

In the early days, One Eyed Buffalo was a small space, but it quickly took off and grew so fast that Fisher decided to give up her lease on the Stone’s Throw. She wanted to just focus on the brewery.

“We only had like 18 tables in there,” Fisher said. “And just the waiting in the summertime and turning people away … it broke my heart.”

That had her shopping around for a bigger location, but before she could find one, the liquor license came up for sale at what is today One Eyed Buffalo’s saloon.

“We were really interested in the full retail liquor license, mainly,” Fisher said. “But so, we opened that place up and we had a little kitchen in the back, and we had the bar and the package liquor store.”

Not long after the 2020 purchase, Wyoming Downs approached Fisher and the saloon became a gaming lounge, with both Wyoming Downs and Cowboy Skill games.

It Sure Is A Dream

Fisher kept looking for that bigger restaurant space, though, and it finally materialized right across the street from her in 2022.

It took about a year to turn the new space into the restaurant of her dreams, a big, roomy, rustic space with two large dining rooms and an upstairs venue for special gatherings.

The huge bar in the back has become a vibrant gathering space for both Thermopolis residents and tourists. And if there’s a reunion-style vibe going on at the restaurant, well there’s a reason for that.

“We’ve met people from all over the country and all over the world,” Fisher said. “And so many of them come back down to this area every year. That’s fun because we know them all by name, and we’re like, ‘Hey, welcome back!’”

Her regulars got something of a treat after Fisher expanded the restaurant space, with new menu items to mark the occasion. Those included the aforementioned filet Oscar and crab legs, as well as lobster.

The filet Oscar is one of the most popular items on the menu these days, Fisher said. Order it and you will quickly understand why. It’s tender, melt-in-your-mouth steak paired with sweet tender crab meat in a delicious brown sauce.

Works In Progress

While the restaurant space is “finished” for now, Fisher told Cowboy State Daily that all three businesses are works in progress.

The old restaurant space has become a brew pub. In part, it was just easier to leave the brewery equipment where it was sitting, and the space itself, small and cozy, was already kind of perfect for a brew pub.

“We’re still kind of working on that place’s identity,” Fisher said. “But for right now, we’re open Wednesday through Saturday and we have pool we have darts, we have the Wyoming skill games in there.”

Food at the brew pub is limited to pizzas for now, like it is at the saloon, but eventually, Fisher envisions burgers and brats available as well.

The brew pub produces about a dozen beers, with several creatively named brews that make a play on the nearby Hot Springs, like Smoking’ Waters Wheat and an Australian sparkling ale called One Eyed Walkabout.

That’s a raspberry flavored beer, kind of like a raspberry lemonade play that Fisher said has been super popular.

Contact Renee Jean at renee@cowboystatedaily.com

Renée Jean can be reached at renee@cowboystatedaily.com.