The Sloppy Donkey Sports Saloon will soon be serving Tex-Mex-style food out of the existing kitchen, which it is revamping. The kitchen changes are part of many renovations being done to the High Street bar.
Owner Christopher Flores, 49, said he hopes the kitchen will be in full operation by late May or early June.
“The intention was to do this when we first opened,” Flores said, “but all the money went to renovations [like expanding the bar], and there was just one cost after the next. Hindsight is 20/20 and we should have done the kitchen first.”
Until the kitchen is complete, Flores will be serving different kinds of tacos to customers for $1 on Thursdays, Fridays and Saturdays with the hope that as more people become familiar with the service, more people will ask about it.
“It’s the concept of fast food but with original recipes of mine and my parents,” Flores said. “It’ll be really fast, and we’ll be serving breakfast, lunch and dinner.”
Some of the featured items include chicken fajitas and breakfast tacos with eggs and sausage in a folded flour tortilla.
Flores said he is modeling his bar after South Campus Gateway establishments such as McFadden’s Saloon and Ugly Tuna Saloona, both of which are chain bars, he said.
“We plan to have entertainment and are putting a stage in the front by the big projection screen,” Flores said. “I take bits and pieces of what I like from McFadden’s and Ugly Tuna.”
Flores hopes that his Tex-Mex cuisine, which is a mix of American and Mexican recipes and ingredients, will stand out among the other Mexican restaurants in the area.
“The recipes have a different flavor than places like Cazuela’s [Grill] and Mad Mex, whose food is a little sweeter,” Flores said. “Our food will have lots of garlic, onion and chile powder.”
Flores wants his restaurant to fill a late-night niche in the campus area.
On Thursdays, Fridays and Saturdays, he said Sloppy Donkey will remain open until 5 a.m. It will be open until 3 a.m. Sunday through Wednesday.
The idea, he said, was that people could come and eat after specials nights at places such as Out-R-Inn, not far from Sloppy Donkey.
As of right now, Flores said they are in the process of tiling the floor
and receiving new, up-to-code kitchen equipment.
“The holdup is the permits,” Flores said.
Sloppy Donkey bartender Kelly Mackessy, a third-year in human nutrition, said she is excited to see the potential increase in customers.
“Chris put a ton of time and money into this place, and the changes are going to be awesome,” Mackessy said. “Hopefully it will bring a lot of business back into the bar.”
Flores estimates the cost of his renovations to be around $50,000 to $100,000, although there is no “bottom line number yet,” he said.
Cortney Prantl, a fourth-year in music business, said anything that is done for the sake of improvement would benefit the bar.
“I was a big fan of Larry’s [the previous establishment] and was pretty upset in the first place when it changed to Sloppy Donkey,” Prantl said. “I’m up for anything different that they do.”
