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The tacos are plump and the drinks are stiff but rootin’ tootin’ fruity for the Steel Bridge and Shanghai Tunnel crowd at the new Tex-Mex cantina The Last Rodeo. If you mixed a Torchy’s Tacos with The Big Lebowski’s Hollywood Lanes and what co-owner Ezra Ace Caraeff calls a “depressed Palm Springs cowboy” aesthetic, then blended it all up and served it over pebble ice in a cowboy boot, then you would get The Last Rodeo.
The Last Rodeo is the latest from the Three on a Match Bar Group responsible for The Old Gold, Paydirt, and Holy Ghost, among others, only this time partnering with Matt Vicedomini of Matt’s BBQ fame. The Westmoreland bar, which also serves Matt’s BBQ Tacos, is a mustard-hue building along Southeast Milwaukie Avenue. With slightly off-kilter and irreverent interior art by Kevin Chupik depicting the Lonesome Crowded West with roadside vistas, truck stop glam, and Damian Lillard, The Last Rodeo is only missing some kind of homage to the classic Portland film Drugstore Cowboy.
Twelve years ago, New York native Vicedomini was working as a sous chef in Australia when he first learned to cook Texas-style barbecue. It was 2016, when Matt’s BBQ was just a food truck on Northeast Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard next to a pawn shop, that Vicedomini met Caraeff and discussed a future collaboration that took nearly a decade to materialize.
“I often find myself lurking in the sad wastelands of Facebook Marketplace looking for odd items for the bars, and it was there that I discovered the listing for our building’s previous tenants, Fallow’s Rest Wild. One quick tour later, I was on the phone with Matt. One hundred twenty-one days later, we were open. Nothing in this industry is quick or easy, but I suppose this is as close as we’re ever going to get,” Caraeff says.
Neither Caraeff nor Vicedomini have lived in the Lone Star state, but they both know their way around a plate of tacos and a party pack of Lageritas ($24). The Last Rodeo rassles up a full menu of all-day breakfast and dinner tacos from the classic Migas taco ($7) with scrambled egg, tortilla chips, pico de gallo cheddar, and guac on a flour tortilla to the bestseller The G.O.A.T. ($9.75) in flour and corn tortilla with queso, brisket and pulled pork (not goat), guac, pickled red onions and cilantro, but that’s just the start.
Given that the space’s former tenant was a gluten- and dairy-free cafe, and its previous lives as an indie music venue and funeral home, the Western bar and taco joint actually feels just right. But Vicedomini says don’t overthink it. “I don’t know, man, it’s just a restaurant. You are eating lunch. Don’t think about it too much.”
Sorry, pardner, no can do. To paraphrase noted Portland cowboy Sam Elliot, “Sometimes you eat the bar, and sometimes, well, it eats you.”
It’s hard to pick a favorite drink from The Last Rodeo’s cocktail menu, which runs the open range from Texas-Tiki, to big-cube classics and vintage martinis, plus an entire section for old fashioned variations (including a brisket-washed version). Bar manager Sid Chi has focused on drinks that pair well with tacos. He created the Cowboy Cooler ($13) at a country-western-themed tequila and mezcal party they threw at their other bar, Southeast Gladstone Avenue’s Holy Ghost.
The Florida cracker-approved Cowboy Cooler ($13) is like an Old West-flavored Pacific Northwest take on a margarita. The drink glitters like a rhinestone in the glass with crystal-clear blue-hued Weber agave tequila, bright with citrus and peppercorn notes and the smooth sweetness of honey and tropical fruit suitable for sipping next to a motel pool. Then a moderate heat and tan color seeps in from Puebla Mexico’s Ancho Reyes liqueur, boasting rich leathery spices, toasted nuts, sun-dried tomatoes and bittersweet cacao with a little of the musty and smoky scent of a well-worn saddle bag.
The sweet essence of orange triple sec counters the campfire heat with a splash of jammy Stumptown farmers market flair from strawberry juice, which is diluted with lemon and soda making it a crushable cocktail suitable for drinking in large quantities. But this is burying the lede like Benedict Cumberbatch in The Power of the Dog because the Cowboy Cooler comes “in a goddamn cowboy boot” glass mug that would feel at home on the Cowboy Carter tour.
The Last Rodeo has all the charm of a Kevin Costner neo-Western with none of the complicated politics. If you need a hearty meal off of Southeast McLoughlin Boulevard’s southbound drag, you have a worthy watering hole to hitch your post.
TRY IT: The Last Rodeo, 6637 SE Milwaukie Ave., 971-369-5000, the-last-rodeo.com. 11 am–11 pm daily.
