Here’s an admission from a blog that calls itself statewide: until today, I had never written a single word about Gillette. I’ve covered Cody, Sheridan, Buffalo, Jackson, Laramie, and plenty of my own backyard in Casper, and Gillette has been sitting on my list the whole time with a big empty space next to it. Time to fix that.
So I went looking for the right place to start, and I landed on The Prime Rib Restaurant & Wine Cellar on South Douglas Highway. It has been open since 1983, it has been run by essentially one person for that entire stretch, and it is named after the thing it’s best known for, which saves everybody some time.
Same disclosure you always get from me: I have not eaten here. This is a scouting report, not a review. Nearly everything below comes from the restaurant’s own website, and where their materials disagree with each other, I’ll tell you. When I finally get a table, you’ll get the real review.
More Than Forty Years, Mostly One Guy
The Prime Rib was founded in 1983 by Ed and Phyllis Vanscoy. Their manager from that very first year was a man named Ken Barkey, and in 1991 Ken bought the restaurant from the Vanscoys. He still owns and operates it today.
Sit with that for a second. The same person has run this dining room since the year it opened: eight years as manager, then more than three decades as owner. I spent my military years watching leadership rotate out every couple of years like clockwork, so that kind of continuity reads to me as almost exotic.
By the restaurant’s own account, the steadiness runs through the whole building. Their About page says many staff have been there more than ten years, some more than twenty, and they sum up their philosophy in one line I genuinely like: “good food does not survive bad service.”
The 2008 Renovation
The second chapter of the story came in 2008, when an extensive renovation added a state-of-the-art wine cellar with capacity for 10,000 bottles, plus private meeting and dining space. That’s when the name changed too. What had been The Prime Rib became The Prime Rib Restaurant & Wine Cellar.
As for the size of the place, the restaurant’s own website describes the building as 10,000 square feet in one spot and 8,000 square feet in another. I’m not going to pick a winner. Call it roughly 8,000 to 10,000 square feet, which by any measure is a lot of restaurant.
The Menu: From Chicken Fried Steak to Aged Steaks
The restaurant describes itself as upscale yet casual, and the menu, as they describe it, backs that up by covering a lot of ground. It runs from what they call “old school” chicken fried steak all the way up to signature aged steaks, with chicken dishes, pastas, and fresh fish in between. The specialty, unsurprisingly for a place with this name, is slow-roasted prime rib.
I like that range. It means the person who wants a signature aged steak and the person who wants a gravy-covered dinner can share a table without anyone losing the argument, which I appreciate as someone who negotiates dinner nightly with a five-year-old. Prime rib is becoming a quiet theme on this blog, too. It’s the signature at the Irma Hotel in Cody as well, and I’m starting to suspect Wyoming has an unofficial state dinner.
For dessert, the restaurant lists New York cheesecake, chocolate lava cake, and raspberries with Russian cream. That last one is what I’d order first, mostly because it’s the one I know least about, and I’m not going to guess how their kitchen makes it. They also sell their signature Honey Almond Vinaigrette to go in a 25-ounce bottle; you order it by calling the restaurant. When a place bottles its house dressing, enough people have asked for it. I’ll take that as a good sign.
I’m not quoting prices, because I haven’t verified current ones. Check with the restaurant before you go.
A Wine Cellar in the Middle of the Room
This is the part that made me want to write about the place.
The cellar is glass-enclosed and sits in the center of the restaurant. It holds wines from around the world, and here’s the detail I’d underline: bottles start under $20. Wines are also sold to go at retail prices, so if something at dinner earns a second bottle, you can take one home.
I’m not a wine expert. My method is mostly reading the back label and nodding like I understood it. But even I can tell that a glass-walled, 10,000-bottle cellar, a global list, and an entry point under twenty bucks is not what I expect to find in northeast Wyoming. Wyoming’s wine culture is small but real (I previewed Sheridan Uncorked a few weeks ago), and a cellar like this one is a serious commitment to it.
The Awards
The restaurant lists a long run of recognition on its own website. I haven’t cross-checked each of these with the organizations that give them, so treat this as the restaurant’s own list:
- Wine Spectator Award of Excellence since 1992
- Wine Spectator “Best of” Award of Excellence since 2007, a multi-year winner
- TripAdvisor Certificate of Excellence since 2012
- American Express “My Favorite Restaurant” Award
- Gillette Chamber of Commerce: 2009 Entrepreneur of the Year and a 2013 Award of Excellence
- City of Gillette Landscape Excellence Award, 2013
The Wine Spectator awards are the ones that stand out. Wine Spectator is one of the best-known wine magazines in the country, its restaurant awards specifically recognize wine lists, and the “Best of” Award of Excellence is a step above the base award. A restaurant in Gillette holding that recognition for years running is a genuinely big deal. Look at the dates, too. According to their own list, the wine program was earning Wine Spectator recognition in 1992, sixteen years before the glass cellar went in. The cellar didn’t create the wine program. The wine program eventually earned a cellar.
And I have real respect for the landscape award. Anyone who has tried to keep anything green alive in Wyoming wind knows that one was earned.
Before You Go
- Address: 1205 South Douglas Highway, Gillette, WY 82716
- Phone: (307) 682-2944
- Sunday: 4:00 p.m. – 9:30 p.m.
- Monday–Thursday: 11:00 a.m. – 10:00 p.m.
- Friday: 11:00 a.m. – 10:30 p.m.
- Saturday: 4:00 p.m. – 10:30 p.m.
Those hours come from the restaurant’s own contact page and are current as of this writing. Note that lunch is weekdays only; Saturday and Sunday are dinner only. At least one third-party listing shows the restaurant closed on Mondays, which doesn’t match what the restaurant itself posts, so if you’re planning a Monday visit, call first. The restaurant’s website also has a reservations page, which I’d use for a weekend dinner or a bigger group.
Tell Me What to Order
Everything the restaurant says about itself adds up to a place I want to try: more than forty years under one steady operator, a staff that stays, a menu with room for everybody, and a cellar with a long run of Wine Spectator recognition. But reading about prime rib and eating prime rib are different activities, and I’m not going to pretend otherwise.
So if you’ve eaten at The Prime Rib, I want to hear from you. Is it the prime rib, or is the chicken fried steak the local secret? Which bottle from the cellar should I look for? Tag @wyofood on Instagram or find Wyo Food on Facebook and tell me what to order when I finally make it to Gillette. I’m long overdue.
— Sean