The strip-mall exterior of Cody's Beef 'n' Beans
If Cody's Beef 'n' Beans were open since the 1950s and run by a 109-year-old chef, I could say it had an excuse for its awkwardly-seasoned if not bland food, its half-done decor, and the overall worn-out feel of the place. But Cody's has only been in business since 1988; while the U.S.'s "culinary revolution" hadn't spread to mom-and-pop establishments by then, Cody's would've been behind the times even by the standards of that year.
Cody's is a casual steakhouse and barbecue restaurant, serving white bread, barbecued pork ribs or pork shoulder, and chunks of beef. For children there are chicken fingers, grilled cheese, and small-portion hamburgers and pork ribs. Chicken and fish are also on the menu, and meals come with side dishes including iceberg lettuce salad, baked potatoes, french fries, soup, salt-and-paprika-sprinkled cottage cheese, cole slaw, and--of course--beans. Soda pop, iced tea, and a small selection of beer and wine are available to drink. No official policy is stated, but in my experience Cody's has been very BYOB friendly, not even charging a corkage fee. Plaza Liquors isn't very far away, making it easy to pass on the boxed "Burgundy" and insipid jug cab sauv and pour a zinfandel or syrah with one's steak.
If Cody's could be said to have a house specialty at all, it is prime rib, cooked to order and available in eight, twelve, and sixteen-ounce cuts for $12.95, $16.95, and $19.95, respectively, served with a jus and grated horseradish. The most acclaimed offering, that occasionally gets Cody's listed in newspaper "Best Of" lists, is the "Codyburger" ($6.95), a freshly ground 1/3 lb hamburger. It's passable--made from a reasonably tender cut of beef, and not dry or chewy--but there's nothing extraordinary about it, like the distinctive Worcestershire-sauce seasoning of "The Bob" at midtown Tucson's Bob Dobbs.
Artifacts evocative of the "Wild West", are used for decoration at Cody's
This could be said about all of the food at Cody's: nothing special. Some of it is downright bad; the chicken and salmon are both overcooked and salty, and the soup of the day usually has the salty, mushy, wrung-out feel of condensed soup from a can. A restaurant with "beans" in its name should treat its beans as a point of pride, but there's little separating Cody's beans from canned chili beans, except perhaps some extra salt. The "Senator Goldwater's Cowboy Beans" recipe that ends up in every community and church cookbook is better. Most home cooks' beans are better. Barbecue comes from the "lacquer the meat with a tomato-based sweet sauce" school of thought, barely tasting smoked at all and showing no signs of a dry rub. The salads, sandwich bread, and dinner rolls all seem to have been given little to no thought. Small adjustments could fix all of this--first, half the amount of salt in everything!--but the Cody's menu hasn't changed since 2003 or earlier and I suspect that little but the prices have been adjusted since 1988.
Even the best item on the menu for the price, the steak sandwich ($8.95), a half-pound sirloin steak served with lettuce and tomato on toasted French bread, shows a lack of attention to detail. It can't be eaten as a sandwich as it comes to the table; it must first be taken apart and trimmed, something that should be done in the kitchen. The sirloin on the sandwich--cooked to order--is, aside from being over-salted, good enough, as are the prime rib and other steaks on the menu, but one could do as well or better at home on the grill.
The decor at Cody's has a half-done feel just like the food. Wagon wheels, cow skulls, rodeo posters, a whole cowhide, and other artifacts and memorabilia of the Old West hang from or lean agaisnt the walls, and the earth-tone color scheme and rough wood accents shows that the owners tried to add an "open range" feel to their strip-mall location. But tan plastic tablecloths and burnt-orange vinyl conference room chairs undermine all this and give the place a "cheap" feel. It was the paper placemats, however, that had me thinking that Cody's might very well have been decades older than it was; the typeface layout are of a sort more commonly seen on documents from 1968 than from 1988. Quaint, yes, but probably not in a way that the restauranteurs intended.
The placemats at Cody's are a typographical throwback.
Restaurants can be said to exist for two reasons: for convenience and to offer a culinary and service experience. There's no clean division, and the best casual restaurants--think Yoshimatsu, Zemam's, or India Oven--offer both. The prices at Cody's, especially given the quality of food served, are too high for a convenience restaurant and the food is too lackluster for it to be worthwhile as an experience. The one reason to go to Cody's is the meeting room, which easily seats twenty if the tables are put together and twice that, for parties, if they are separated. Cody's is one of the few restaurants in central Tucson with a private room available (the Auld Dubliner is another) and possibly the only one of these that charges no extra fee for use of the space. Civic and political groups thus regularly visit Cody's even though there's little reason to go there individually. To the restaurant's credit, its service is more attentive than usual for a mom-and-pop joint, and regulars, including groups making monthly use of the meeting room, are treated especially well. Checks are separated by default.
Cody's Beef 'n' Beans belongs, with Casa Molina, the now defunct Rose Garden Chinese Buffet, and a few others, of Tucson restaurants that are throwbacks to times, styles, and standards of quality for which nobody with reasonable taste is nostalgic. The meeting room means I'm a regular in spite of this, but I cannot in any way recommend the restaurant otherwise. Many far better casual restaurants are within two or three miles, or one could just order tacos from Nico's and stay home.
Cody's Beef 'n' Beans, open 11 AM to 9 PM Monday-Saturday, is located at 2708 E. Fort Lowell, in a strip mall on the south side of the street, west of the intersection with Treat Avenue.
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