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Texas Roadhouse — not the roadhouse Patrick Swayze worked in. No, Texas Roadhouse is from Indiana and founded by a guy named Wayne Kent Taylor. Mister Taylor was born in Missouri, went to school in North Carolina, and was found dead at 65 in his home in Kentucky from… *checks notes* huh. The S word. We’ll just skim right past that one.

But you’re not here for a history lesson. You’re here for the noms. Let’s take a look at them and see if we can figure out why in the line-dancing, yee-hawing, steak-eating hell TXRH has been so damn successful the past 32 years. I mean, I use the term “hell” loosely. This place is good.

Not Really Texan, But…

Look, it’s pretty obvious that anyone from Texas laughs when TXRH’s food is called “Texan.” Case in point — I’m from Texas, and I laugh at anyone who thinks a “Ft. Worth Ribeye” is a real thing. You will not see Roadkill listed on any menu in Texas. You won’t see a deep fried onion blossom on any menu in Texas outside of Outback. And no one in Texas calls it “Country Fried” anything. My brother asked for a chicken fried steak at TXRH one time, and they gave him a plate of their Country Fried Chicken because no one knows what chicken-fried is there.

You know what Texas has a lot of? Brisket. Slow smoked, fall-apart slices of love. Texas has pecan pie, kolaches, and pan de campo, always lathered in butter and honey. And Texas has Frito pie. Invented in the 1930s by Daisy Doolin in San Antonio, Frito pie is the most quintessential of Texan cuisine

And you won’t find any of those items at TXRH.

You’ll find a rather milquetoast mélange of mediocre meals that seem like somebody from Indiana’s version of what Texan food is. And that’s not necessarily an insult. Eh. Never mind, yes it is. I did say this place is good a few paragraphs ago. Gimme a minute to get there, jeez.

Let’s start with the starters.

Only one of these items is considered Texan food, and it’s the one with Texas in the name. The chili.

The chili here is freaking amazing. I don’t use that word lightly. To say it’s the best thing on the entire menu is not an understatement. It’s the reason it’s sold out about a third of the time I go into the restaurant. The chili was sold out during one of my two visits here while getting ready for this blog post. It’s popular, and for very good reason. I’m not gonna spoil it. You’re gonna have to scroll down for my review.

The rest of the items on here? Rattlesnake bites, tater skins, fried pickles, boneless wings — They’re all just cannon fodder for people who didn’t want to go to TGI Fridays or B-Dubs. I’m not saying they’re bad. The cheese+bacon fries here are incredible, especially if you ask for them well done/extra crispy. The ribs are fine, and the rattlesnake bites are even pretty good. They’re just not Texan. If they wanted to stick to their theme, they’d have Texas twinkies and Frito pie next to that Texas Red, and they’d have sweet kolaches on the dessert menu.

We’ll let them keep the rolls. They’re better than camp bread. Or is it cowboy bread? Camp bread sounds better.

Just Why’s it So Rowdy?

I guess it started in 2003 when they won Best Steakhouse from Consumers’ Choice. They hit Forbes’ top 50 best small companies two years in a row in 2006 and 07. They won… *checks notes again* Loudest Restaurant in America by Consumer Reports in 2012. Huh. That definitely tracks.

This place is, indeed, loud. As in, birthday cheers hurt your ears. Well, my ears. And as far as I can tell, it’s part of the brand. You can’t really name another restaurant as loud as a TXRH on a Friday night. And that’s with them having removed the bar in recent remodels in favor of more seating.

Couple of misconceptions, though. There’s no line dancing. At least not anymore, and not in any of the locations within an hour of my house. I’m sure someone will correct me on that, but it’s not like there’s room in there for line dancing anyway. If you’ve seen how tight they pack those aisles between seats, there isn’t even any room for walking. Plus the servers have to stand next to the POS screens to enter orders, and those are crowding the walkways. Somebody at corporate prioritized seating over having room to walk in some formation other than single file.

Also, they don’t force you to sit in the … I’m gonna bleep this — cu*k saddle when it’s your birthday. It’s entirely optional. Don’t worry, I don’t think the cu*k saddle is real, and even if it were, it probably can’t hurt you.

They don’t sing to you on your birthday, even if you request it. They yell at you with a hearty “YEEHAW” and bring you a free side of some kind. Honestly though, ribs are better than ice cream. /nod

Speaking of food, let’s get on with this.

Nom Time

We’re starting with the freebies. Peanuts.

Instead of having barrels full of them like they did twenty years ago, they have them in tiny bags now full of salty little goodies. They’re great for giving you something to do with your hands while you wait for your meal when it’s busy. They’re great for keeping noisy kids occupied digging for treasure. And peanuts are a great little appetizer.

There’s a big, big problem with them though.

Let’s clear the air, here. Don’t dump your peanut shells on the ground. They give you a bucket to put the shells in for a reason. You’re creating more work for the employees, you’re gonna cause a lawsuit from somebody slipping and breaking their hip, and you’re a bad person.

Thankfully, at my local TXRH, no one does this. But I’ve read stories from as recently as two months ago that there are peanut shells all over the floor at specific locations, and it just makes me angry that people are so disrespectful, okay? Management put an end to that stuff years ago. Stop it. You’re not being cool. >:(

OKAY. GOOD VIBES. Back to the food.

The rolls. Fresh baked bread. They are SO FREAKING GOOD.

The bread itself comes out of the oven every ten minutes or so fresh, and they go through so many baskets of them. I don’t think I’ve ever gone to TXRH without asking for an extra basket or two. They come four per basket, and if there are three or four people at your table, obviously you’ll need more.

The rolls are slightly sweet and they pull apart with very little force. They’re also always served hot immediately as you’re seated. Your server will actually pick them up from the bar as your name is called to be seated and carry them while guiding you, as if leading you by the nose to your residence for the next hour. And they’re always served with a cup of cinnabutter to shmear all over them.

The cinnamon butter is a point of contention, I’ve found. I love it. It’s slightly sugared, finished with cinnamon and honey for a hit of love, and then whipped for his, her, and their pleasure. Unfortunately, some people, particularly from older generations, are against the idea of mixing sweet with savory. To serve their limited palates, you can always ask for regular butter at no extra charge.

Which brings me to my next point. Extras at this place of almost any kind are never nickel and dimed. Butter? Ranch? BBQ sauce? A side of jus to dip your fingers in? All free. No limits. I have never been charged for a special request here, and honestly, that feels great. It’s not about the money — It’s about the message. TXRH tends to take care of you, and as a millennial who grew up not being taken care of, I appreciate that. It’s been said that people under 40 don’t feel like anything good will ever happen again. I’ve seen the meme. And I don’t think it’s true when I can go to TXRH and request eight cups of ranch for my tater skins, and get them. And get lids for them to go.

It seems like they make the distinction whenever something is food as opposed to a condiment. They’ll charge you for bacon bits. They’ll charge for mushrooms, onions, and probably cheese. I haven’t personally ordered a side of cheese. I guess that means I’m not quite living my best life. Cheese can be a condiment if I want it to be.

But anyway, let’s go over some of the starters.

Cactus Blossom

No, it’s not a Pokémon move known only by Cacturne and Bellossom. It’s a deep fried friggin’ onion. Some might say it’s blooming. In fact, if you ask your server to bring you a blooming onion, they’ll know exactly what you mean and say something to the effect of “a cactus blossom? You got it.”

Okay, storytime. In 1985, Chef Jeff Glowski at Russell’s Marina Grill in New Orleans decided to cut an onion into a flower shape, bread it, and deep fry it. The dish was so impressive, it was added to the menu as something called an Onion Mum. A man named Tim Gannon (not Ganon, and not this Gannon) worked there at the time and decided to utilize his lack of contractual obligations to rip off Glowski’s creation and bring the onion with him when he moved to Florida. That’s how Outback’s Bloomin’ Onion was born.

Texas Roadhouse, utilizing proper corporate theft as opposed to improper, took the recipe and altered it slightly before adding it to their menu in the 90s several years after Outback opened. Thus the Cactus Blossom was fried into existence.

Beat for beat, this thing’s a great deal. It’s tasty, super crispy, extremely well seasoned (a bit much for my tastes), and probably one of the more calorific things on the menu. If you’re interested in excess, then it’s $9 well spent.

Each onion bloom is soaking in oil, probably because it’s fried at such a low temperature to make sure the onion gets cooked before the crumbly crust burns. And that’s a good thing. You’re not eating this every day. You probably shouldn’t even eat this every week. This is a once a month, share-it-with-friends type thing. Your arteries can take a little abuse once a month.

And as long as you’re abusing your body, make sure you dip every onion bloom in the sauce that comes with it. It’s like a tangy pepper-spiced sour cream/mayo amalgam that has just a touch of smoke, and honestly, it’s great. If the onion itself is inferior to Outback’s version, the sauce at TXRH manages to pull slightly ahead.

Tater Skins

Another good call on the starter menu, these stand out because of the insane cheese pulls you can get from them, as seen above. They somehow manage to be super fluffy and crispy at the same time, the way a good fry should be. Think of them as giant potato wedges. Flat ones.

Only other thing to note on these guys is that they come with sour cream, which is fine. It’s also very boring. Do yourself a favor and request some Cactus Blossom sauce instead. Or even ranch. You won’t regret it. The ranch is great with them, or anything really. To paraphrase Emeril, you could slather that stuff on a car bumper.

Texas Red Chili

This is in the starters section of the menu, and because of the price ($4 for a cup, $5 for a bowl — GET A BOWL. ALWAYS.) I’m gonna include it with the other starters even though you can get it as a side with your meal.

For five bucks, you get what’s pictured above. I’d call that an insane deal any day of the week before you even take the flavor into account. Flavor is why we’re here though, and this stuff is god-tier. To say it’s the best thing on the entire menu understates just how incredible it is. The chili at TXRH is legit, and this is coming from someone who grew up in Texas eating chili. It might actually be the only legit thing on the menu.

Sure, it ain’t pretty, but every bite of this chili is savory to the max. The beef hunks are so tender, the sauce is instilled with meaty, peppery goodness, and the cheese and onions on top give it the textural component it needs to go from amazing to nearly perfect. It even comes with a couple packages of saltines in case you need to add some crunch.

But what if you have no idea what Texas chili actually is?

This is carne con chile rojo, a Texmex dish that mixes beef with onions, garlic, bell pepper or paprika, dried guajillo or ancho chiles, and cumin. Anything you add to it beyond that, aside from salt and pepper, usually takes away from the experience as opposed to adding to it. That said, I think TXRH uses some tomato as a filler, and thickens this with flour instead of the traditional masa harina.

What they absolutely do not include in this recipe is beans, and I am astonished to find that every single copycat recipe on the front page of Google for this has beans in it. That infuriates me. It makes me swell with rage, because clearly, clearly, there are no beans in the actual recipe, and just how is it a “copycat” recipe if you’re including stuff that isn’t in the original?!

I’m not a bean hater. In fact, quite the opposite. But Texas chili just doesn’t have beans in it, and all of these food bloggers are doing people a disservice by insisting they add pintos (or worse yet, kidney beans) to their recipe. I feel like my anger is justified, but let’s just sail past the fact that the bean-eating internet is collectively high on their own brand of farts.

… GOOD. VIBES. I need to follow my own advice.

Get the chili. Don’t even question it. Just get the chili and feel joy.

Caesar Salad

Yep, that’s a casual dining $5 Caesar salad, alright.

It’s okay. Certainly not the best thing on the menu. The dressing is the worst part — You can barely taste it, and there’s no hint of the classic Caesar flavors like lemon, garlic, or anchovy. Maybe I just had a cold that day.

The parm is good and there’s a ton of it, the croutons are crawmchy, and the lettuce is fresh. There isn’t too much more to say about it other than the astounding speed at which it comes out. There must be a dedicated saladeer in the back throwing these together at lightning speed as soon as they’re ordered. Also, I appreciate the fact that the plates are always extremely chilled. Like, practically frozen.

Loaded Fries

We’ve been slowly dancing with the starter-side boundary, and I’m gonna place these firmly in side territory for one reason, despite them being listed on the starter menu. For the sake of your wallet, order these as a side with your meal. They’re $11 when ordered off the starter menu, and only $1.29 upcharge when you order them as a side. And it’s the same enormous portion either way. That’s just smart economics.

Seriously though, if you wanna get full, just eat these. There’s so much cheese, a good amount of bacon, and the fries are, well, fries. My only caveat is that if you leave them sitting too long, the cheese can congeal and the fries can get a little soggy. Order the fries extra crispy/well done if you wanna avoid that, and you’ll have crunchy, potatoey goodness for several more minutes than you otherwise would.

10 out of 10, would eat again. It’s also not the last thing covered in cheese and bacon we’ll be eating today.

Loaded Baked Potato

That honor goes to the humble baked po-tate. Or the jacket potato if you’re from the UK.

I’ma be up front here — This isn’t my favorite thing. I don’t hate a baked potato by any means, but I’ve never been in a situation where I’ve preferred one to a different potato composition. Maybe I have the palate of a child. Or maybe I’ve just ascended beyond such petty trivialities. Maybe I’m the Potatoborn.

Let’s start with the good. The skin is crispy. The interior is a little dense, which I actually prefer to overly fluffy. It’s not a twice-baked potato, and it’s not really supposed to be. There’s a mountain of whipped butter and sour cream on top. And if you get it loaded for the $1.29 upcharge (which you always should), they pile on the cheese and bacon.

The good ends around where the potato meets your mouth. I’m not picky — I’ll eat just about anything. But come on, the cheese isn’t even melted. The butter is practically ice cold. The toppings make the whole thing downright frigid, and it just ruins the vibe.

Also, take a look at the skin of the potato in the picture above. Just image all that salt coursing through your veins. This potato wasn’t an outlier, either. They’re always extremely heavy handed with the salt to the point that the skin is inedible.

Maybe I’m being harsh on it because I prefer my potatoes in other formats. A nice scallop’d or gratin’d, a hash’d brown, or tot’d tater. It doesn’t always have to be fries. Even mashed and twice-baked are great. But this baked potato isn’t just boring. It’s lazy and offensive. Skip it.

Green Beans

One more side before we hit the mains. And this one deserves special attention because of the love they put into it.

Nestled into this little bowl of goodness are beans of green, yes. But they’re stewed in bacon and onions, and honestly, what more do you need for something to taste good? They’re super comforting in the same way green bean casserole at Thanksgiving is comforting. You’re getting your greens in, sure, but they’re stacked with all the flavor from everything else in there. Every morsel leaves you feeling like you just bit into a pork chop covered in onions. Come to think of it, why isn’t that on their menu?

Oh, it is?

Well then. I’ll be damned.

Pulled Pork Dinner

The first main dish (I don’t like the term entree because it doesn’t mean what it means) we’re covering today is the pulled pork dinner for $14.49. It’s one of the cheapest meals on the menu, and like all the others, it comes with two sides of your choice.

Let’s quickly cover the pork before we move onto the main event here. It’s good. It’s tender, moist, and all the other adjectives you’d use to describe braised pork. There’s nothing really pulled about it. They expect you to pull your own pork. As opposed to having the kitchen staff do it.

It isn’t really outstanding. I could cook better in my smoker at home. Or my oven. Or my slow cooker. Like I said, it’s good, and that precludes it being great.

Now what isn’t good about it? … The bread? No, I wasn’t even gonna mention that.

The barbecue sauce. This sauce isn’t good. It isn’t great. It is OUT-FREAKING-STANDING.

It’s thick, smoked, sweet, has a little bit of a tang to it, and tastes nothing like the jarred stuff you find in stores. It’s not quite tomato-forward, although I can tell it uses a tomato base. I have no idea what the recipe might be, but I know brown sugar is involved. And I know they make it in house at every location.

I don’t even particularly enjoy BBQ sauce, and I could drink this stuff. And I did. Okay, drink is a bit of an overstatement. I sipped it. It was barely a shot. It was a pony shot of BBQ sauce.

All told, I don’t recommend this. Sure, it was fine. But there are better things on the menu for not much more. Oh look, here’s one of them.

Country Fried Chicken

I bet you thought I was gonna talk about the country fried sirloin. While chicken fried steak is one of my favorite things, I’m already reviewing a steak today. Oh, you don’t think prime rib counts as steak? I’ll support your opinion even if it’s wrong. But we’re not talking about that yet.

First of all, “country fried” is not a thing. It’s a marketing term. No one calls anything country fried. It’s chicken fried. As in, fried in the manner that one fries chicken.

This is, therefore, chicken fried chicken. It’s a chicken breast cutlet that’s been breaded and deep fried in the manner one would bread and deep fry a piece of chicken. If you’re confused, then TXRH is calling it “country fried chicken” for you. Don’t feel bad. You’re not from the American South. I was born into chicken fried. Molded by it. I did not see country fried until I was a man.

Regardless of which semantics you prefer, this is some tasty noms, and for around $15, you kind of have to try it. Do you enjoy Japanese katsu? This is the same thing, except spiced a little differently and smothered in a different sauce.

And let’s talk about that sauce for a minute, because it’s i n c r e d i b l e. You get your choice of brown gravy or cream gravy when you order this, and for the sake of argument, we’re gonna pretend the brown gravy doesn’t exist. And when you’re at TXRH, it really shouldn’t exist. The cream gravy is too good. Every bite of it is a warm, wet hug. I promise that’s better than it sounds.

They don’t put any sausage in it, which would normally be a sin in any respected Southern household. But I dare say, it benefits from being a little more flavor neutral. It means you can mix it with EVERYTHING ON THE MENU. Seriously, there’s nothing it doesn’t go with. Dip your fries in it. Throw some on your green beans. Add it to your soda. There’s a brownie on the dessert menu, and I bet it just makes it better.

But seriously, the combination of crispy chicken and creamy gravy is gold, and if I may say, entirely underrated. More people need to discover the greatness of this salt-laden piece of bliss. I prefer it to the country fried sirloin here, mostly because the steak cut they use is low quality. I love beef, but I’ll take chicken over bad steak any day.

Prime Rib

This little 12 ouncer runs about $26 and comes with two sides. And it’s home. Eating this — it’s home.

When you cut into this steak, it carves under the lightest pressure. The ribeye specifically cuts like butter, and I don’t like overusing that expression. But the rib cap is where it’s at.

It falls apart in your mouth. You could gum this if you had no teeth. You could practically slurp this steak up with a straw with how soft it is. And this isn’t from some high dollar steakhouse. This is from a cheap, casual dining place.

I think what TXRH does right is balancing cost for performance. This isn’t a prime cut prime rib. Yeah, I know prime is in the name, but the “prime” in prime rib is a misnomer — it’s a standing rib roast. I’d vote that we stop using the terminology “prime rib”, but I’m not in charge of that.

Anyway, they manage to take a reasonably cheap piece of meat, select grade probably, and they cook it at scale with enough love that it comes out perfect every time. I say select grade, because if it were prime grade, it’d cost twice as much. Especially with how insane beef prices are nowadays. A choice ribeye from Costco is running about $30 a pound right now, so $26 for a 12 oz slab of ribeye is a deal.

I could go into how savory every bite is and how it all melts in your mouth, but you’ve heard that all before. All you need to know about this ribeye is that meat fans will enjoy it.

Let’s not forget about the two sauces it comes with, though.

The jus here is made from drippings from the rib roast itself. You can taste the mire poix they used to roast everything before straining it out and tapping this liquid gold. Honestly, I wanna ask for this stuff as a side for other items on the menu. I can imagine making myself a French dip out of the rolls and some other items on the menu.

But as good as the jus is, the horseradish cream is probably the best dipping sauce in the whole place, and this is counting all the bangers here in the form of the ranch, the cactus blossom sauce, and the homemade BBQ sauce. It’s got a bite to it, it’s creamy af, and it likes to stick to anything you dip in it. It’s addictive in a way that you’re out of it before you notice. I’m gonna start asking for this horseradish cream sauce every time I come to TXRH. It’s that good.

Time To-Go

Texas Roadhouse isn’t the best restaurant I’ve ever been to, but it is my favorite casual dining place. I genuinely love the food, the prices aren’t horrifying, and I always feel like I’m taken care of when I come in. What else are you gonna ask for when you live in middle America?

Sure, there are “better” steakhouses. No one’s gonna deny that Ruth’s Chris is better. It’s gonna cost you four times as much, and you probably have to make a special trip to it since there are only 150 of them and there are over 800 TXRHs. You’re talking about an entirely different experience when you start factoring in stuff like that.

Is Outback better than TXRH? I dunno. I like them both. I’ll do Outback as a Pop Nom someday. Maybe someday soon to get the comparison out there. But no one’s gonna deny that’s apples and apples. They’re too similar to really be distinctive from one another. It’s like Applebee’s and Chili’s, minus the fact that the food at Chili’s actually has flavor.

Anyway, that’s all for today. If you’re one of the many TXRH haters, I hope you check it out again soon and give it another try. You might be pleasantly surprised.

Love & peace <3