WEST PALM BEACH, Fla. (CBS12) — At the new West Palm Cowboy Club, a two-story barbecue restaurant and music club now open on Clematis Street, which is stronger: the smoke or the soundtrack?
The answer, if you ask co-owner Brian Swanson, is yes.
In one corner, there’s triple-Grammy-winning, EDM-country crossover svengali DJ Diplo, who’s a minority partner and official music director of the 5,000-square-foot downtown venue within the 1923 Citizens Building. In the opposite corner, there’s Miami-style barbecue from Allapattah’s popular Slab Daddy BBQ whose chef, Adrian Ricouz (ex-Hometown BBQ), turns out 18-hour smoked brisket, peach-glazed spare ribs, cornbread and caviar and hearth-fired pizzas.
A barbecue platter with various Latin-influenced sides at West Palm Cowboy Club in West Palm Beach. The new restaurant and nightclub, featuring barbecue from Miami’s Slab Daddy BBQ, has its grand opening scheduled on March 26. (Jim Rassol/Contributor)
“Who can even say what’s better?” Swanson says of West Palm Cowboy Club, which debuted March 10 with a grand opening scheduled for March 26. “It’s the best of both worlds: Nashville meets South Florida. The music is sophisticated and the food is delicious.”
At 250 seats (90 on the ground floor, 70 upstairs, 90 more on its waterfront-facing patio), the Cowboy Club at 200 Clematis St. boasts two bars, smells like a distillery and resembles a honky-tonk with chic aspirations. Its unofficial mascot, a glittery disco ball-shaped pig, suspends over a brick-lined corner music stage that’s framed in flatscreen TVs and multiple acoustic guitars painted red, white and blue.
Arguably the venue’s most distinctive features are its ceilings, appointed in upside-down felt cowboy hats, gold chandeliers and thousands of whiskey-barrel staves in crisscrossing patterns, which Swanson says help “absorb and muffle the music for our office neighbors.”
“We had to reconfigure the building’s ventilation system so the offices upstairs didn’t smell like brisket all the time,” Swanson adds.
Swanson describes Cowboy Club as a “refined, grown-up” offshoot of his Columbus, Ohio-based barbecue house Bristol Republic. The restaurateur says he originally planned to open a version of Cowboy Club in Wynwood in 2021 until “an issue with the lease” torpedoed the project, so he moved north to West Palm Beach instead with backing from DJ Diplo.
“West Palm Beach is night and day compared to Wynwood,” says Swanson, who lives in West Palm Beach. “This space is amazing, it’s a small-town vibe here, and it feels like home.”
Grammy-winning DJ Diplo, real name Thomas Wesley Pentz, is a minority partner and musical director of West Palm Cowboy Club, a two-story barbecue restaurant and country music nightclub in West Palm Beach. (Rony Alwin and Alex Ferzan / Courtesy)
Swanson says a “mutual college friend” hooked him up with the globetrotting producer, whose career has dipped into producing songs for Beyonce, Jonas Brothers and Justin Bieber and dived into bass-blasted country-pop albums under his moniker, “Thomas Wesley.” (DJ Diplo, real name Thomas Wesley Pentz, couldn’t be reached for comment about his West Palm Cowboy Club involvement despite multiple emails to his publicity team.)
“I was looking for a country artist to be involved in this project, and Thomas is from South Florida,” Swanson says of the South Florida-raised DJ, who attended South Plantation High School. “His personality fits the brand really well, because country is evolving into EDM and hip-hop. We’re not your average country bar, and he’s not your average country star, and now he’s got an outlet with this venue.”
Swanson says Wesley will be “heavily involved in curating our music playlists” and steering international touring acts with concerts at nearby iTHINK Financial Amphitheatre to play after-parties at the Cowboy Club. He says Thomas has already helped lasso multiple major acts to the venue, including Yacht House Summer Tour on April 19 and Luke Bryan in September.
Chef-consultant Adrian Ricouz, who operates the Slab Daddy BBQ food truck in Miami’s Allapattah neighborhood, says he liked Swanson and his Cowboy Club idea immediately, contributing brisket, pulled pork and ribs that “taste like Miami.”
“We cook a little more Latin, with some Nicaraguan fritanga-style rice and beans,” says Ricouz, who plans to introduce new barbecue dishes often. “I came up with the cornbread and caviar concept and the pizza sauce and the beef ribs that are super-dope with the chimichurri. The bottom line is to make the food as great as the atmosphere and to keep the place fun and funky.”
Dishes include Carolina-style smoked brisket, turkey, pulled pork, mojo chicken and peach-glazed spare ribs, served by the half-pound ($15-$32), by the platter with sides like mac ‘n’ cheese and green bean salad ($28-$64) or in “BBQ Bowl” form with rice, beans, vegetables, guacamole and Tumbleweed Crispy Onions ($19-$22). There’s also a double wagyu smash burger handheld ($18), appetizers ($11-$29) spanning fried pickles to brisket potato skins and caviar and cornbread and 12-inch hearth-fired pizzas baked at 750 degrees ($17-$19) topped with brisket, Buffalo chicken and veggies.
There are 10 cocktails ($14-$18) and two specialty shots (one for $10, three for $25) alongside red and white wines, non-alcoholic drinks and premium whiskey pours and flights from the upstairs back bar. Swanson is also planning an aggressive 3-7 p.m. Monday-Friday happy hour in April, when cocktails are $10, pizzas are $12 and beer and wine is $5.
The location aims to draw traffic from nearby West Palm GreenMarket and this month’s Palm Beach International Boat Show (March 25-29), Swanson adds — and not just with live country music. Some music acts will perform electronica and hip-hop, he says, primarily on Sundays.
“We’re still rooted in country, but with a broader, more modern energy and food offerings that reflects where the music and the audience are today,” he says.