Eating Wyoming: Buffalo Bill Was The World’s Original Galloping Gourmet

The first Mexican restaurant in New York City was not opened by Mexicans as one might expect, but instead by Wyoming’s most famous and beloved cowboy ever.

The temporary restaurant — first Mexican restaurant east of the Mississippi — was opened by none other than Buffalo Bill Cody, who set up this temporary establishment in Madison Square Garden in 1886.

The cooks were wives to a couple of Mexican vaqueros, so the food was truly authentic. A New York Sun reporter’s account of the time describes the first course of the meal as “a sort of meat chowder,” called “puchero Mejicano,” with a “great many things in it, among which rice and chile peppers were distinguishable with the eyes closed.”

Other items on the menu included, spelled as they appeared in the newspaper of the time: Chilceconcarne y Frijoles, Tortillas, Henchiladas, Picadio Con Tortillas, Chile Rellenos, Tamales, Cafe a lo Mejicano, Chocolat Mejicano and Capirotada Mejicano.

Henchiladas, the writer explained, were a “device of the cook,” not unlike a French pancake with jelly — in other words nothing like an enchilada of today.

“A strong man, born to the custom, might learn to like the henchilada,” the New York Sun reporter went on to say, but added, “A New Yorker isn’t likely to ever contract an incontrollable appetite for this Mexican dainty.”

Even less likely to gain popularity, the reporter predicted, were the tamales, which he described as peppers “hashed and seasoned with brimstone,” before being rolled into a dough that “resembled a peeled banana” and doused in a “preparation like mucilage.”

It was the sort of thing that a “prodigal son might eat in an emergency,” the reporter said.

“Mr. Cody’s guests yesterday noon tried to eat of the dish,” the reporter wrote, with a notable “lack of gusto.”

But the reporter was completely wrong about tamales. They turned out to be a huge hit in New York, and, within a few years, there were tamale carts all over the city.

Culinary history had been made, even if Cody was largely unaware of his impact.

Fine Dining For The Masses

It wouldn’t be the first — or last time — that Buffalo Bill Cody would make a mark on culinary history.

“The thing about Buffalo Bill is, nobody thinks about him as a gourmet,” scholar and author Steve Friesen told Cowboy State Daily. “But I found well over 2,000 pages of notes that were articles talking about Buffalo Bill dining with people and talking about the food.”

Cody’s Mexican restaurant was the first instance Friesen stumbled across, and it ultimately inspired the book he wrote called the “Galloping Gourmet: Eating and Drinking with Buffalo Bill Cody,” published by University of Nebraska Press.

Friesen borrowed his book’s name in part from a PBS special of the same name, which featured Graham Turner.

“Galloping Gourmet is just so appropriate for Buffalo Bill, because he was an incredible horseman,” Friesen said. “But he would also, when he was interviewed, talk about food, and how the people in his show ate, and why he took care of them so well.”

It seemed particularly important to Cody that everyone involved in his “Buffalo Bill’s Wild West and Congress of Rough Riders of the World” eat and eat well, Friesen said.

“He had anywhere from about 400 people in the beginning to close to 1,600 people near the end working for him in that show,” Friesen said. “And he had to feed them all three times a day. So, he actually came up with some innovations that made doing that easier, but because he was a gourmet … when he began his show, he didn’t give any of that up. He basically shared good dining with his people.”

Cody’s people also didn’t walk into a mess hall to get their meals. They went inside a huge tent, which was set up just like a fine dining restaurant. The tables had a nice tablecloth and real china. A waiter would even come to take their order and serve the food.

“By the time you got up to 1,600 people, that was a major task,” Friesen said.

Meat Stick Banquets

Feasts were a common theme with Buffalo Bill Cody for his Wild West exhibition, which he refused to call a show, fearing it implied exaggeration and misrepresentation of the West. He employed real cowboys and Indians for his productions — and threatened to fire anyone he heard describing his production as a show.

Banquets were a huge part of the Wild West exhibition. They were a taste of things to come, and Cody would invite all kinds of dignitaries, as well as members of the press, to come and enjoy.

Cody came up with a novel way of presenting these banquets. Diners were ushered into a tent with animal skins serving as a kind of carpet, dotted with an assortment of wooden seats, stools and trunks for those who wished to sit.

Whiskey and beer flowed rather freely — though Cody honored a commitment not to drink while his Wild West exhibition was traveling. The main course might be roasted buffalo or beef roasts, offered from a large tin pan. Guests would stab their choice of the meat with sharp wooden sticks and were encouraged to simply eat the meat from off the stick, no plate or utensils required.

There would usually be a few fresh vegetables like sliced radishes or tomatoes, and watermelon to round out the feast.

But the clear star of these cowboy camp banquets or rib roasts, as they came to be called, was definitely the meat.

The feasts weren’t always rib roasts though. On one occasion, Buffalo Bill Cody hosted a breakfast of spring chickens fried in cream with corn, corn bread, onions and hash, following a baseball game.

Cody, at the time, said he wanted to give people “an idea of how easy it is to prepare a real good feast without the aid of fashionable restaurants fitted up with all the modern improvements.”

The Hunting Trip That Changed Cody’s Life

Cody probably developed his love of gourmet food early in his life, Friesen told Cowboy State Daily.

It was an 1871 hunting trip that first introduced him to elevated preparation of food. Cody, in his 20s at the time, had been tapped as a guide and entertainer for the group, which included some of New York’s wealthiest figures.

They were there to hunt all their meat, and that included buffalo as well as many other types of game. The only provisions they brought were the things chefs would need to turn their wild game into gourmet meals.

What’s a “square meal” for a party of hunters look like to a group of wealthy New Yorkers hunting wild game in the West?

An 1879 menu in Cody’s notes suggests it was a sumptuous affair, worthy of any high-end restaurant — even if some of the things were pretty unlikely even in that day and age.

There was buffalo tail soup as well as broiled cisco fish and fried dace to get things started.

The long list of entrees started with Salmi of prairie dog, stewed rabbit, fillet of buffalo, aux Champignons (with mushrooms) and continued on with roasts of elk, antelope, black-tailed deer, and wild turkey. Rounding out the list were broiled teal, mallard, antelope chops, buffalo-calf steaks, and young wild turkey.

These men didn’t forget their vegetables. Not entirely anyway. There were sweet potatoes, mashed potatoes and green peas.

For dessert, if you had any room left, there was tapioca pudding.

Drinks included two kinds of champagne as well as claret, whiskey, brandy and Bass’ ale.

“Bill, in his autobiography, tells you that it was an amazing meal,” Friesen said. “And he goes item by item, telling exactly what they ate and what these guys prepared.”

Bringing Popcorn To France

Cody was a hit with these hunters from New York. They considered him quite a fine character. Not only did they tap him for future hunting expeditions, but they invited him back to New York City and then showed him off all over town.

“He goes to banquets,” Friesen said. “He eats at Delmonico’s. He ends up being sort of the toast of the town.”

It’s here where Cody gets his first taste of theater and realizes that he could make far more money as an entertainer, playing himself, than he ever could as a real-life guide and scout.

Cody’s Wild West exhibition was among America’s first mass market productions. It would eventually take him and his culinary feats all around the world. Ultimately, Cody would also make his culinary mark on European countries, the same way he had New Yorkers and their eventual taste for tamales.

“He was in Paris in 1889 for the World Exposition here, and that’s the exposition where they opened the Eiffel Tower,” Friesen said. “And there is a newspaper article, or maybe it’s a headline in an American newspaper, I forget which one, which says, ‘Buffalo Bill is teaching Paris to eat popcorn.’”

Popcorn was a novelty in Europe, one that hadn’t been widely experienced until Cody introduced them to it.

“This popcorn was quite a novelty,” Friesen said. “And it was also a novelty when they made bon-bons out of popcorn, which were basically popcorn balls.”

The popcorn balls were a convenient way to sell the popcorn and were instantly popular in France.

“In fact, it was to the point where there was a theater critic a year or so later, after Buffalo Bill had been there with his show, and the critic was complaining. He said, ‘It’s next to impossible to hear the actors tell their parts, to hear them on the stage, because everybody is joining this new concession of popcorn while they are sitting at the play.’”

Cody also opened one of the largest bars in the world while he was in London.

“It was 700 feet long and it served American cocktails,” Friesen said. “And they imported American bartenders to specifically serve the cocktails.”

These cocktails featured something that wasn’t common in Europe at the time — ice.

“Buffalo Bill introduced Europe to American cocktails with ice,” Friesen said. “And they caught on. In fact, there are American bars still in London where you can get American cocktails, as they call them.”

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