Under the Cow on Clements Road

The Cow Is Still There. So Is the Dairy Behind It.

At The Trough in Target Range, the 15-foot cow on the corner has outlasted three owners and one name change — and the place underneath it still runs like a neighborhood stop, not a destination.

Drive west on Clements Road past Reserve Street and the cow is the landmark people use to give directions, even if they've never set foot inside. It's been standing since the 1970s, back when this corner was Dale's Dairy, run by Dale and Betty Jo Johnson after they bought the place from the original owner, John King, who'd been selling raw milk here since the '60s. The Johnsons ran it until 2009. After a short stretch as Target Range Market, Carter and Susan Beck took over in 2014, gutted and rebuilt it as The Olde Dairy, and a year later opened The Trough next door. The cow stayed put through all of it.

What the Becks built is part restaurant, part gas station, part neighborhood market — the kind of combination that sounds like it shouldn't work but is exactly what a lot of people in Target Range seem to want. You can fill your tank, grab a sandwich, and pick up wine for dinner without leaving the lot. Inside, there's a fireplace and a patio, and the rental space in back can hold up to 60 people for parties or catered events.

The food leans on scratch-made soups — lobster bisque and a Thai chicken curry both come up by name from regulars — and a "big beef" sandwich that's earned a following of its own. Breakfast runs all week, with brunch added on weekends, and the deli counter in the market does its own business in meats and cheese for people just stopping through. On Tripadvisor, The Trough sits at 4.5 stars and ranks in the top third of Missoula's 200-plus restaurants; on Yelp it's pulled in close to 140 reviews. The word that shows up again and again from customers isn't about any one dish — it's "neighborhood."

That's the throughline here, more than the menu. The Trough doesn't read as a restaurant that happens to be in Target Range. It reads as a fixture that happens to also serve food — the same role the cow has played on that corner for fifty years, just with better coffee.