12 reviews of Roadkill Cafe 'Great Southern-style home cooking and sweet tea. Hours, Take-out, Good for Kids, Good for Groups.

Remember those more or less gross items reprinted with great glee from the menu of the 'fictional' Roadkill Cafe?

The ones about 'chunk of skunk,' 'center line bovine,' 'round of hound' and 'flat cat?' The last served on a shingle or in a stack? The motto being 'from your grille to our grill?' Those menus now are floating all across the United States.

Well, lo and behold, the joint ain`t fictional.

It sits beside a blacktop 16 miles south of Bob and Donja Bovee`s Spring Creek Camp near Big Timber, our headquarters for a recent antelope and mule deer hunt. We drove past it morning and night and stopped a couple of times for a sandwich and beer.

It`s on a road to nowhere. The road splits and peters into gravel, ending in the Gallatin National Forest. According to the postmaster and general-store operator in the only other establishment in McLeod, the cafe is the social beacon for maybe 150 ranchers and their guests in the summer, no more than 70 in the winter.

Some of those are celebrities who have bought big spreads in the last few years within this undulating expanse between the Beartooth Mountains and the Crazies. Actor Michael Keaton`s padlocked gate is across the road and down a bit from the Roadkill. Brooke Shields reportedly stops when she`s on the road. Ditto for Tom Brokaw and author Tom McGuane.

It`s a nice place, actually. A big wooden frame building with knotty pine paneling. A big, well-lit bar in one room, booths and tables in another. A small stage for the occasional country band. Room to dance by the jukebox. Clean toilets, friendly people, good food and a nice variety of beers.

Real racing 2 games. Owner Bob Bryan killed the black bear whose enormous skin provides a backdrop for the stage. Killed it with a pistol while turkey hunting. Had some 7-mm slugs along with the special pistol shot loads he uses for turkey.

'I was just blowin` this stupid turkey call when I heard a `woof` behind me,' Bryan said. 'The bear was lookin` for a turkey. It finally stood up and looked at me, and I shot it between the eyes from 30 yards.'

Bryan, also a local dentist, said he decided to name the place Roadkill when he and some friends were out having fun one night. He said he was afraid the name might put off customers, but it didn`t work out that way. People have an appreciative sense of humor.

'A lot of dead things used to appear in the parking lot, but that`s pretty much over now,' Bryan said. 'Things like a coyote draped over the sign. A deer propped against the building. A lot of small creatures here and there.'

The cafe offers two menus, one a joke, the other mostly sandwiches and snacks. Unfortunately, Bryan doesn`t actually serve the things on his roadkill menu. Things like Slab of Lab, Cheap Sheep, Smear of Deer. The law wouldn`t allow that. The closest his real menu comes to exotics is an item dubbed

'Bear Scat,' or deep fried cheese balls with ranch dressing.

If you ask, a waitress will bring over some bona fide roadkill recipe books-one from Canada, the other from, of all places, Berkeley, Calif. People dropped them off. Those goofy roadkill menus that proliferate throughout the country are in abundance here.

'The thing is, there probably is nothing wrong with eating roadkill-as long as it`s fresh,' mused lifelong trapper and mountain man Don Schonenbach, one of my guides. We were into our second beer at the Roadkill. Wiry and taciturn with a ponytail and scraggly 10-inch beard, he hunts rabbits and blue grouse with a blowgun he found in his sister`s pawn shop.

Talk about recipes.

'Take a can of Skoal and boil it in three tablespoons of water, then let it simmer,' Schonenbach said. 'A 4-inch dart dipped in that will kill a 40- pound dog in three minutes. Nicotine overload.'

Schonenbach announced that his favorite drink is called a 'Waterfall'-

shots of tequila, Jack Daniels and Black Velvet. 'A guide last year sat here and drank six of `em,' he said admiringly.

Schonenbach announced that last year he converted seven deer and three antelope into 59 quarts and 32 pints of canned meat. He also canned several jars of bobcat and cottontail.

The bobcat goes fast, he said. That`s a secret of the West, along with the yumminess of prairie dog. 'Nothing out there may be as tasty as cat,'

Schonenbach said. 'It`s white meat. Very mild and flavorful.'

I related how a couple of former Montana game wardens told me they would vie for the meat whenever they heard someone had taken a mountain lion. They knew hunters wanted just the head and skin. No one gave a thought to the meat`s being any good.

'So they kindly `disposed of it` for the hunters,' I said. Schonenbach grinned. 'You know how they disposed of it. They ate it.'

I said people worry too much about what wild critters eat. 'Think of what pigs and chickens eat.'

I ordered another round. 'You know what they call armadillos in Texas?' I said. 'Road pizza. They have this flaw. They jump straight up when a car passes over them.'

So goes bar talk at the Roadkill Cafe. It must be something in the air.

Born in Iran and raised in the U.S. From the age of seven, Ali first developed his skills playing at local clubs in Washington, D.C. He was introduced to Sharam Tayebi through a childhood friend and soon after they formed Deep Dish; a production and DJ duo that conquered the world of electronic music - picking up a Grammy in the process - in addition to a vast array of other awards and accolades.

At the height of their success, both opted to take a step back and pursue solo careers, with the Dubfire alias allowing him to express his deeply rooted love for techno. He quickly integrated himself into the minimalistic techno scene and produced several key releases that cemented him as a true visionary and a force to be reckoned with; ‘Ribcage’, ‘Emissions‘, and ‘Roadkill’ and of course his iconic remix of Radio Slave and Danton Eeprom’s ‘Grindhouse,’ now widely considered a bona fide techno classic.