You’re Too Late, Stagecoach Has Already Left - CLOSED

 Stagecoach Country Roadhouse

763 South Main Street Suite 200 A

Orange, CA 92868

This has happened infrequently, but it has happened before during the run of this blog. I eat in a restaurant, write my review, and find out that the restaurant has closed for good. The few times this has happened, I had an inkling that things were amiss. That's how I felt when we left Stagecoach Country Roadhouse a few months ago. 

Stagecoach might have done some research before opening here. This location appears to be cursed. Stagecoach would be the third restaurant to inhabit this space in just six years. I tried to find what was here before 2018, but it was a Burgerim from 2018 to 2021, and then switched to Jaybird's Chicken from '21 to '23. Stagecoach took over in September of last year and closed its doors for good the first of this month, six months later. 

I decided to write this review anyway because I paid for the meal, and it may shed some light on what went wrong here. We came here before a Ducks game on a Sunday afternoon just before 4pm. The restaurant seemed cavernous with its high ceilings, exposed beams, and lack of customers. Even though the football games were in their final quarter, the large bar area in the restaurant's center had only two customers watching the nice TVs hanging from above. We were the only other patrons in the restaurant. 

We were greeted by our cordial server, who seemed relieved to have something to do. He presented us with their one-page menu, broken up into starters, salads, burgers, sandwiches, specialties, sides, and desserts. Entree prices ranged from $14 to $43 for the ribeye steak. We didn't take too long to select what we ate because we had a game to catch.  

Since I was a kid, I've been a fan of potato skins. My favorites of all time were the ones from Claim Jumper, with Black Angus coming in a close second. These from Stagecoach Country Roadhouse would not make my top 50 potato skins. These were not very good. The menu describes these Potato Skins ($9.75) as including bacon, cheddar cheese, sour cream, and scallions. What I got was some cheddar cheese sauce that drowned out what might have been bacon, with a thin sour cream floating on top of the pool of cheese sauce. The potato skin was fried well when bitten but could not contain all this liquid. Why even include the ranch dressing? With all the liquid here, I could almost eat these with a straw. I managed to eat one of these and left the other two for Katie, who also thought these were not too great. 

Katie selected the Pulled Pork Sandwich ($13.95 plus a $2 upcharge for the Heavenly Mac N' Cheese) as her early evening meal. This pork sandwich had a lot going on. The pork came with a bourbon barbecue sauce, and they also added cabbage-apple slaw and fried pickles. This sandwich seemed off to Katie. With everything going on here, she could not get a good handle on whether the pulled pork was good. The barbecue sauce was really distracting. The heavenly mac and cheese was anything but holy. Again, with the overabundance of cheese sauce, the macaroni-to-cheese ratio was way off. This ate more like a soup than mac and cheese. A truckload of breadcrumbs could not have saved this. 

As is my custom, I prefer combo meals when eating in restaurants, as they give me a better chance to try more than one thing. At Stagecoach, that meant that I had the Loaded Gun Board ($29.95), which included baby back ribs, pulled pork, andouille sausage, and a slice of cornbread. Everything came with their overpowering barbecue sauce, which seemed to hide their subpar meats. The best of the bunch was the sausage, which had a good flavor, but I'm sure they did not make it here. It also did not have the barbecue sauce, which was a plus. The ribs were second best, with plenty of meat but not flavorful. The pork was drenched in BBQ sauce and left in very big pieces. It wasn't very tender and was unenjoyable to eat. The cornbread was passable but unmemorable. 

I feel bad writing this review. It's like kicking them when they're down. Besides the lackluster food here, Stagecoach might have expanded way too fast. They opened in Sedona, Arizona, in 2021 and then opened this place and another location in Riverside within a month. It's tough opening one restaurant, let alone two, so that might also have contributed to the downfall of this place. The Riverside spot is still operating, and they have a respectable 4-star rating on Yelp. Over the past few years, I've experienced some excellent barbecue spots in OC, and this would not be included in that group. 

Out of five bank robbers (because when I think of stagecoaches, I always think about the bank robbers that would rob the stagecoach at Knott's Berry Farm), five being best to zero being worst, Stagecoach Country Roadhouse gets 1.5 bank robbers. 

For more information about Stagecoach Country Roadhouse, head to their website by clicking here: https://stagecoachroadhouse.com/