text: Excited to experience a showdown between Elote chef Jeff Smedstad who we have long loved and think is the best Mexican chef in the US and the Chef at Cowboy Ciao we arrived with high expectations for a special meal The premise was each chef was to prepare dishes with wine pairings and the crowd was to vote and pick the best dish and pairings What a great premise right Unfortunately the meal was disappointing The first shrimp course was cold overcooked chewy and flavorless The other courses that followed were cold under seasoned and just plain bad in our view Smedstad should be ashamed and embarrassed His culinary work is so strong at Elote He is a true genius Not sure what happened here but this food was not up to the standards of a chef of his caliber The wine pairings were fun however several of the wines were whites and rose which is not necessarily a bad thing but these wines were served about degrees too warm which made even some very nice wines unpleasant The restaurant seemed ill equipped to handle a crowd of this size it took way too long to serve each course which likely explains why the food was cold and the wine was warm In any event we will not be back to Cowboy Ciao