PLAINS AND FANCY You have to admire any chef in the vastness of rural Texas who decides to buck the menu monoliths of barbecue and chicken-fried steak. But that’s exactly what chef-owners Randy Allred and Edward Harvey are doing at Randy’s of Wildorado, their restaurant on Interstate 40 some fifteen miles west of Amarillo. At lunch they offer homey, crowd-pleasing food to the good people of Wildorado, a don’t-blink-or-you’ll-miss-it community of two hundred. But at dinner, the candies come out in the understated dining room with its quirky art-work (heavily into rabbits) and the menu goes into high gear. Back in the kitchen, the two are whipping up entrées that run the gamut from golden-brown fried baby lobster tails crusted with coconut to crunchy cheese-and-shrimp-stuffed chiles rellenos in jalapeño lobster sauce. Even side dishes get the royal treatment-portobello fries with ponzo sauce, for instance. And though pecan pie may not be the world’s most sophisticated dessert, Randy’s version is state of the art.
