Barking Frog Grille, Sedona, Arizona

Who wouldn’t want to eat at a place called the Barking Frog? When I was researching restaurants for our recent Sedona vacation, the name really caught my eye. Plus I loved the menu: full of exciting Southwest cuisine. I really miss this kind of food since I’ve moved away from Texas in the mid-1990s. Sure I know that it’s different in Arizona compared to Texas. But still, these are the flavors of my youth.

welcome to the Barking Frog Grille

They’ve a sister restaurant in the tourist-trap part of town, Cowboy Club and Silver Saddle Room. We stumbled into that place for a drink on a hot afternoon not realizing the two were connected. I loved the whisky sampler and both of us enjoyed the thrilling cactus fries. Hegui promised to try making that at home sometime. I’m still waiting.

We didn’t order that at Barking Frog. We wanted to try something new.

here I am hungrily sitting in front of the Barking Frog Grille

cool subtitle to the Barking Frog Grille

I made a reservation for a Wednesday evening. The restaurant is huge with numerous very widely spaced tables in dim lighting. Hegui was preoccupied with the relative darkness (Heartline Café was really dark, too). And it is pretty jarring, insofar as the sun shines so brilliantly in Sedona. I made what I think is a funny video of him ranting on this topic.

We had great service though there was some problem with the hostess staff. Upon our arrival, we were immediately seated at a spacious corner table in a large dining room. A few minutes later, a rather officious hostess aggressively approached us and demanded to know how we had gotten to our table. Weird, right? So I said that the other hostess sat us… I mean, how else would we have gotten there? (I guess that I might have said “we walked” but I was in a good mood after our sunrise hot air balloon ride that day.) She replied with something like, “so they just sat you here?!” then she rushed off. So bizarre!

blurry and dim Barking Frog interior

Well after we recovered from the shock with a round of beer, we ordered the chili dusted calamari and the Caesar salad with cornbread croutons. Both were good though my pics turned out horridly—it has to be the dimness of the dining room—so I’m going to let you use your imaginations here.

Barking Frog Grille poblano relleno

Barking Frog Grille shrimp tamale

For his main, Hegui had the scrumptious poblano relleno stuffed with cheese in a roasted corn cream sauce and a chipotle tomato sauce. Mmmm! I had the amazing shrimp tamales. The dish was huge, messy and wonderful.

By then we were completely stuffed. Dessert was out—sorry Heavenly.

Except for the odd seating mishap, we had an excellent experience at the Barking Frog.

looking down from our hot air balloon

inside our hot air balloon

memorable Sedona sunrise