I have made no secret about the fact that I think it is a crime for the new Rodeo Goat in East Dallas to serve a burger named for Skip Hollandsworth, the Texas Monthly writer. Skip is a carpetbagger from Preston Hollow. And he works for a woman from Houston. Nonetheless, this is exactly what has transpired. My only comfort is that they spelled Skip’s name wrong on the menu.
Last night, the Casa Linda Rodeo Goat had a “friends and family” gig to get the kitchen up to speed for the restaurant’s official opening today at 4 o’clock. Goat owner Shannon Wynne was there, carrying around his adorable granddaughter. And, lo, who else did I encounter but the burger eponym himself, Skip Hollandsworth. I can’t tell you how happy it made me to learn that the first printing of the menu misspelled his name on the Skip Hollandsworth Murder Burger (a Frito pie with a burger patty, top bun impaled by a knife). I think it was spelled “Hollingsworth” at first. They had it corrected by the time Skip and I posed for this disturbing picture (photo cred: the long-suffering Shannon Hollandsworth).
When news broke last year about this Skip business with the burger, I argued that if any journalist in East Dallas deserved a burger named after him, it was Jim Schutze. Or me. Well, Wynne clearly reads FrontBurner. On the drinks side of the menu, there is a passage written by a fictional fellow who tells a story about the State Fair of Texas and how he won money by wagering on a goat-roping competition that he rigged by getting one of the goats drunk on Busch. At other Rodeo Goats, that fellow is Willard “Daddy-O” Watson. At Casa Linda, though, he is Timmy “The Schutze” Rogers.
For the record: both my and Jim’s names were spelled right the first time.
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