LANDER — When Tasting Table slapped a “Best in Wyoming” label on the Cowfish restaurant in Lander, owner Kyle Vassilopoulos didn’t get a phone call or even so much as a cryptic email.
He found out the way a lot of news travels across Wyoming — from a friend.
“I had a friend who works in the wine industry who saw it, and he sent it to us,” Vassilopoulos told Cowboy State Daily. “That’s it. That’s all I know about it.”
It could have been a secret judge visiting the restaurant. It could have been someone just passing through Lander. Or maybe it was something else completely unknown.
Whatever it was, Cowfish has landed on Tasting Table’s list of best small-town restaurants in every state, where small-town is defined as anything under 21,000 people.
Vassilopoulos is quick to point out there are a lot of great small-town restaurants in Wyoming, to the point he sounds almost apologetic about winning.
It is an honor, he acknowledged. But on any given day, depending on which way the Wyoming wind blows, the same judge might have chosen one of the other great restaurants.
“If there are 20 places that are in the running, and they’re all really good, it’s an honor to know that we’re definitely in the running for one of those 20,” he said. “I think it’s really great that we got the recognition. We’re really happy about that.”
The courtyard between Cowfish and the Gannett Grill and Lander Bar serves as an unofficial living room for Lander every summer. (Renee Jean, Cowboy State Daily) 
An outdoor patio at the Cowfish looks onto the adjacent courtyard that lies between the restaurant and the Lander Bar. (Renee Jean, Cowboy State Daily) 
An outdoor patio at the Cowfish looks onto the adjacent courtyard that lies between the restaurant and the Lander Bar. (Renee Jean, Cowboy State Daily) 
The legend of the cowfish printed on the restaurant's menu was created by Jerry Sowers. (Renee Jean, Cowboy State Daily)
Staying Great In The Slow Season
The timing couldn’t be better in Vassilopoulos’ opinion. Lander isn’t Jackson Hole, after all, with a ski resort in the backyard that’s pumping out winter tourists by the minute.
“This is the slowest time of the year for us in Lander,” he said. “It’s hard to talk about business right now, when it’s the small-town sort of death spiral and we’re waiting and biting our fingernails until spring.”
It’s a battle that many small-town restaurants across Wyoming face.
While Jackson businesses are juggling just two short shoulder seasons, small towns in Wyoming have a shoulder season that is more like an eight-month-long, chilly plateau.
The Cowfish, perched in the historic Coalter Block in Lander next to the town’s beloved Lander Bar, which Vassilopoulos also owns, has to find ways to ride that plateau out every year, all while still putting out the quality plates that have earned it recognition over the years, including a James Beard nomination in 2022 for the restaurant’s chef, Chris McDonald.
McDonald isn’t someone tapped from a huge metro area. He’s a local who has lived his whole life in Lander, and worked on the Coalter Block for 26 years.
“That was probably the most significant one,” Vassilopoulos added. “He was a finalist for the Rocky Mountain area, so basically like six states in the Rocky Mountain region. He was picked out as one of the top eight chefs from New Mexico, Colorado, Idaho, Montana and Wyoming.
"To be in the top eight chefs recognized by James Beard in those states, I think that’s pretty significant.”
A bartender at the Cowfish garnishes a freshly made cocktail during the dinner rush. (Renee Jean, Cowboy State Daily) 
The legendary cowfish was created by a Lander Oldtimer named Jerry Sowers and adopted by the Cowfish restaurant in Lander, recently named by Tasting Table as the best small town restaurant in Wyoming. (Renee Jean, Cowboy State Daily) 
The Lander Bar is part of the Coalter Block, which includes Cowfish and the Gannett Grill. (Renee Jean, Cowboy State Daily) 
Art on the walls at the Cowfish echoes the legend printed on its menu, about a strange half cow, half fish creature. (Renee Jean, Cowboy State Daily)
Keeping It Fresh
McDonald does a lot of things in the kitchen to elevate the cuisine at Cowfish.
Things like flying in fish fresh from the ocean from Seattle, so that the sea bass with miso, for example, is a dish that tastes like it’s a fresh catch.
“It’s just overnight FedEx on the airplanes, in Styrofoam on ice, so it’s 12 hours old, fresh fish from the ocean,” Vassilopoulos said. “And Chris will do a lot of fresh fish dishes, and that’s always nice because you’re not going to find a lot of that in central Wyoming.”
Vassilopoulos’ favorite dishes, meanwhile, are the seasonal ones where the chefs are changing things up and displaying a bit of creativity.
“I love the different variations of mussels that we do seasonally,” Vassilopoulos said. “We usually do them in the winter. I always enjoy those when we have them.”
The restaurant also tries its best to buy local when it can, though Vassilopoulos is hesitant to play that up too much.
“We basically will buy anything we can local if we can,” he said. “But Wyoming is not a food-producing state, so basically there’s nothing local. There are some things that are local, but it’s such a minuscule slice of everything we do.”
Some of the local produce has included microgreens grown locally, and off and on there have been local mushroom suppliers. But stuff like that comes and goes like the Wyoming wind.
“It’s hard to grow a tomato in the state,” Vassilopoulos said. “So, listen, we will buy everything that we possibly can to support our neighbors and our community and anybody else who’s working hard and doing fun things in the food space.
"We love to be part of that. But the fact of the matter is, it’s crickets. There’s almost nothing. So I’m not going to beat the drum and pretend because it sounds good.”
What they do make sure to do, that many other restaurants do not, is make everything from scratch. There’s never any dish that’s box-to-plate at Cowfish.
The Hospitality Edge
But good-tasting food isn’t what Vassilopoulos believes ultimately separates good restaurants from great.
What really makes the difference in his mind is something keener and much sharper. It’s the hospitality factor.
Hospitality is what can take a humble dish of macaroni and cheese with a few crumbles on top and make it feel like something extraordinary.
“(The food) can be anything,” he said. “It can be pizza, it can be macaroni and cheese, it can be super fancy food. It can even be tweezer food, or sushi.”
But if even fancy food is served in a place that just feels weird, where hospitality is lacking, people will just fill their stomachs and move on, never to return.
“If you’re in a place where … people are really nice and they’re taking care of you, then you’re going to come in and have great food,” he said. “And regardless of what that food is, whether it’s something very simple or something really extravagant, it’s sort of enveloped in that nice hospitality atmosphere.”
The Miso sea bass, right, is flown in overnight from Seattle, making it almost like fresh caught. It is perfectly prepared, and served here with rice and a signature cocktail from the Cowfish restaurant. (Renee Jean, Cowboy State Daily) 
A steak dinner at the Cowfish. (Renee Jean, Cowboy State Daily) 
There's a lot more than cow on the menu at Cowfish. (Courtesy Cowfish via Facebook) 
There's a lot more than cow on the menu at Cowfish. (Courtesy Cowfish via Facebook) 
There's a lot more than cow on the menu at Cowfish. (Courtesy Cowfish via Facebook) 
There's a lot more than cow on the menu at Cowfish. (Courtesy Cowfish via Facebook) 
There's a lot more than cow on the menu at Cowfish. (Courtesy Cowfish via Facebook) 
There's a lot more than cow on the menu at Cowfish. (Courtesy Cowfish via Facebook) 
There's a lot more than cow on the menu at Cowfish. (Courtesy Cowfish via Facebook) 
There's a lot more than cow on the menu at Cowfish. (Courtesy Cowfish via Facebook) 
There's a lot more than cow on the menu at Cowfish. (Courtesy Cowfish via Facebook) 
There's a lot more than cow on the menu at Cowfish. (Courtesy Cowfish via Facebook) 
There's a lot more than cow on the menu at Cowfish. (Courtesy Cowfish via Facebook)
The Legend Of The Cowfish
For all the serious craft and thoughtful hospitality that goes into the Cowfish restaurant, though, there’s an “X factor” that few other restaurants can boast.
It’s a whimsical little cowboy legend that tells a tall tale about the restaurant’s origin.
It’s printed right on the menu and spins a tall tale about how cowboys on the range discovered a strange, hybrid creature that was part cow and part fish — a critter destined for surf-and-turf glory.
The amusing folklore didn’t come from a fancy branding agency. It came from a local character, R.G. Sauers, who previously restaurant owner Jim Mitchell said was a bit of a cowboy poet.
“He started these little cowfish carvings on the entrance to the bathrooms,” Mitchell has told Cowboy State Daily in previous interviews.
Sauers also took a photo of himself on a horse next to the Bighorn River, lassoing a cowfish item he had made for his little legend.
When Mitchell asked if they could tweak the story to print in the menu, the old cowboy was thrilled by the idea.
That’s been the restaurant’s signature origin story ever since, and it puts a smile on a guest’s face pretty much every time, no matter how many times it’s been read before.
The legend, crafted by a Lander old-timer, sets a table that lies somewhere between myth and meat in the mind. It’s part of what makes the place more than just a great gathering spot with a great meal.
It’s a place where Lander’s stories are getting told in ways that feel as legendary as the West, creating an experience that always feels worth it, any time one happens to be near Lander.
Renée Jean can be reached at renee@cowboystatedaily.com.
