Osage County Restaurant Provides Unique Dining Atmosphere

A viewer told us about our latest Oklahoma's Own report. They told us about a place with great food and a singing waiter who sounds just like country singer Randy Travis, plus a dining area like we've never seen anywhere else.

Wild Country Meats started doing custom processing more than 20 years ago. The meat market offers a wide variety of great cuts of meat.

But with Oklahoma's drought, they started thinking about diversifying and opened a small restaurant last summer.

"There's a lot of people that are not carrying near the cattle that they had last year, so we thought, 'Hey, why not cook some food?' and it just kind of took off," said owner Chris Gabriel.

The fresh cuts of meat, hot off the grill, quickly became a big hit.

"We've got rib eyes, sirloins, t-bones, filet mignons, pork chops, pork steaks," Gabriel said

What they didn't have was very much seating. So, Gabriel came up with a unique idea.

"I thought about doing a railroad car, and that had been done. I thought about doing a storage container; that has been done, as well. About that time, a cattle trailer rolled by, and I thought, 'No one's tried that,'" Gabriel said.

You heard right. He set up the dining area in a cattle trailer--two of them, in fact. They're called bull wagons.

When customers told their friends about it, some thought it was bull.

"'Yeah, right.' I thought he was lying to me. But sure enough, sure enough. It's cool. It's nice," said Owasso resident BB Braswell.

And sure enough, Gabriel transformed the trailers into quite the attraction, despite even his own family and friends who said it would never work.

"I was supported by few, argued by many. A lot of people didn't like the idea and thought it was crazy," Gabriel said.

Turns out it wasn't crazy, after all.

Their number of seats tripled. There's now enough room for a singing waiter for entertainment, and it's a hit with folks hungry for great food and something different.

"It's really unique," said Osage County resident Carolyn Vaughn.

"When you drive by, before you even come in, you go, 'Wow,'" said customer Libbye Brooks.

"These actually have hauled cattle in Osage County," Gabriel said. "I actually had a customer that came in and his mouth hit the floor. I said, 'What's wrong?' He said, 'This trailer has picked up my cattle.'"

The 52-foot trailers were insulated. They spent two months cleaning them and reconfiguring the trailers into tons of space, raising the floors and putting down new aluminum tread flooring.

"It looks like five-star dining right now, but it didn't start out that way," Gabriel said.

It started out as a crazy idea and ended up making Wild Country Meats an even more desirable destination.

"How often do you get to sit in a bull wagon?" Gabriel said.

Wild Country Meats fires up the grill from 11 a.m. to 8 p.m., Monday through Saturday. The meat market opens at 9 a.m.

It's four blocks east of Highway 99 on Highway 20.