The Cookout in Monroe offers down-home twist to fast food favorites
A popular Monroe eatery features a menu that gives a soulful, homespun twist to American fast food favorites.
The Cookout offers a variety of fast food favorites, such as burgers, chicken wings, tenders, fish and French fries.
The restaurant's wings are offered in an assortment of flavors, such as buffalo mild, buffalo hot, honey BBQ, spicy BBQ, bourbon, teriyaki, ranch, mango habanero, honey mustard, garlic parmesan, sweet red chili, lemon pepper, lemon pepper mild, lemon pepper hot, cool lemon pepper and The Cookout's signature rub.
The wings are sold boneless and bone-ins, with combo choices that include a 6- , 10-, 15- and 20-piece.
The restaurant's specialty burger menu includes the single burger, double burger, and triple burger with meat options in beef, veggie or turkey. Other menu items include chicken tenders with combo options in three- and five-pieces, salad, onions, loaded fries and onion rings. All combos are served with homemade, fresh-cut French fries with an option of crinkle-cut fries.
The Cookout Combo, which owner Jamaro Hill considers the restaurant's bestseller, offers a single burger, four wings and a drink for $12. Hill said the bestseller gives you the taste of everything.
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Hill opened the business in 2016 as a food truck after seeing a need for more food trucks in the area. Hill said the only operating food truck in the area, at the time, was Fay's Fat Burger.
"I was just tired of working and wanted to start a business," Hill said. "I just thought about doing a food truck, doing chicken wings on late night, and it turned into me opening on lunch, later all day and eventually restaurant hours."
Hill said the business took a few years to gain recognition but the eventual success of the business lead to the opening of a location at 1301 N. 18th Street in Monroe in October 2020. The restaurant relocated to a location on DeSiard Street in August.
The restaurant still operates a food truck that travels to several cities in Northeast Louisiana on special days.
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"Right now, we have a license in Winnsboro and Ruston," Hill said. "We try to at least do twice a week. One day in Winnsboro and one day in Ruston. We're working on getting more licenses for West Monroe, Alexandria and Bossier."
Hill said there are plans to incorporate an additional food truck by October 1.
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The restaurant is working on reopening its bar, which became popular at its previous location during its "Groove and Grub" nights that featured a live DJ. However, Hill said the new location will no longer feature the live.
"We had a lot of bar sales because it wasn't any bars open," Hill said. "It was like people was coming to drink because they miss having somewhere they could and purchase alcohol. Even now when we do start back selling alcohol, we are not going to do the live DJ because it got a little packed and out of control for people who didn't want come to a restaurant. We want to keep it the restaurant style this go around and do just regular drink specials."
In addition to the bar, the restaurant will soon feature a patio, which is currently under construction.
"It's going to be a real nice attraction for companies to meet maybe for a lunchtime meeting or maybe a school reunion to kind of gather or a birthday party," Hill said. "People can gather and have a nice atmosphere for them to eat at. It's going to look like you're in a different restaurant when you step onto the patio. It's going be real nice."
The Cookout is located at 5120 DeSiard Street Suite A, Monroe and is open 11 a.m. to 9 p.m. Monday through Thursday, and 11 a.m. to 10 p.m. on Friday and Saturday.
This article originally appeared on Monroe News-Star: Get down home food at this Monroe restaurant: The Cookout
