food network

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By Ellen Fike, Cowboy State Daily

A popular Laramie restaurant is preparing for its time in the spotlight with its appearance Friday in a segment of the Food Network series “Diners, Drive-Ins and Dives.”

The Crowbar and Grill will be one three restaurants featured in Friday’s episode, titled “From Italian to Asian,” and host Guy Fieri will highlight the restaurant’s bulgogi (Asian seasoned steak) fries and Billhook pizza.

The series focuses on “greasy spoon” restaurants which typically serve comfort food-style dishes. Other restaurants to be featured Friday’s episode are in New Mexico and Alaska.

On the night of the show, the restaurant will project the episode onto one of its walls.

Restaurant General Manager Emily Madden told Cowboy State Daily on Wednesday that production scouts from Food Network reached out to the bar around Thanksgiving, letting staff know the show was interested in filming there.

“When they got ahold of us, it was a year-and-a-half into the pandemic, I think everyone was pretty exhausted by that point,” she said. “Just getting the call to say that we were considered, and then after we talked to producers about the recipes and finally getting the call or email to say it was happening, it was emotional. It was just some really good news when things were not so great.”

Crowbar is the third Laramie restaurant to be featured on the show in recent weeks. Sweet Melissa’s, a vegetarian restaurant, and Prairie Rose, a breakfast and lunch spot, have already been featured. At least two more Laramie restaurants are slated to appear on the show in coming weeks.

Madden said in December, Fieri came to the city and filmed at a handful of restaurants over a two-day period. She complimented both the host and the production crew for their friendliness and professional attitudes during the couple of hours it took to film the segment.

“The show has been on for 15 years, and some of the people who work on it have been there the whole time,” she said. “They understood what it was like to work with people in a restaurant setting. It was such an interesting case of seeing the sausage getting made, basically.”

In the two weeks since the air date was announced for Crowbar’s episode, Madden said the restaurant has seen an uptick in customers, a trend she expects to see continuing into the summer, which is normally a busy period for the business anyway.

“There are some people who travel just to go to the places featured on ‘Diners, Drive-Ins and Dives,'” she said. “Plus, we get tourists coming through, people visiting the college and I think more people will be out traveling in general this summer.”

Laramie is not the first Wyoming city featured on “DDD.” A few restaurants in Jackson have also appeared in segments.

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