Verified in 2 cities.
Rocky Mountain oysters is a signature dish of United States; we have verified places to eat it in Denver and Fort Collins. Battered and deep-fried bull testicles, sliced thin, served with horseradish cream and cocktail sauce; a ranch-country bar snack that survived in old-Denver steakhouses.
Battered and deep-fried bull testicles, sliced thin, served with horseradish cream and cocktail sauce; a ranch-country bar snack that survived in old-Denver steakhouses.
Rocky Mountain oysters arrived in Denver with the Front Range cattle trade in the 1860s, a ranch-economy use of branding-season byproducts. The Buckhorn Exchange, opened in 1893 by Henry H. Zietz, kept them on the menu through the 20th century alongside elk and bison. The Testicle Festival in Throckmorton, Texas popularised the dish nationally; in Denver, Buckhorn and a handful of old-school steakhouses still run them as a starter. The dish remains a tourist initiation more than a serious local staple.
Where to eat in Denver:
Where to eat Rocky Mountain oysters in Denver: the editor picks
Colorado's infamous ranch-country dare: bull calf testicles, sliced, breaded and fried, served with cocktail sauce and a straight face in Fort Collins bars.
Rocky Mountain oysters come out of Western ranch culture, where spring branding produced an ingredient thrifty cow camps refused to waste. Sliced thin, breaded and deep-fried, they became a bar-food rite of passage across Colorado and the plains states. In Fort Collins, The Colorado Room keeps them on a menu of localised bar food alongside sliders and poutine, which makes the city an easy place to settle the dare with a Colorado beer in hand.
Where to eat in Fort Collins:
Where to eat Rocky Mountain oysters in Fort Collins: the editor picks
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