Restaurant Steak?

RyanB

RyanB

Super Administrator
Management Council Member
PoA Supporter
Joined
Jul 21, 2010
Messages
16,524
Location
Chattanooga, TN
Display Name
Display name:
Ryan
What restaurant chain do y’all think has the best steak? I’m usually not a fan of restaurant steak, as they all taste alike, and the higher end joints like Ruth’s Chris are just waaay overpriced. I went to LongHorn the other night and was thoroughly impressed with their 8oz Renegade steak. Had it cooked medium-well and it was excellent. Outback, Texas Roadhouse, and most other common chains aren’t anything special imo. The best steak is cooked at home on the grill, but when it comes to restaurant steaks, where do you go?
 
Longhorns. Was there today...for a grilled chicken sandwich.
 
I rarely order steak in a restaurant due to the high price - frequent disappointment ratio. I can do better than most places with a decent cut of meat and my grill. There is one local steakhouse we go to for special occasions, they're pricey but the steak isn't disappointing.
 
LongHorn is ok. We usually go to Major’s steakhouse. It’s not a chain but it has moderately priced steak that tastes fantastic. I went to Cut by Wolfgang Puck in Las Vegas last year for my birthday and had a great Japanese wagyu cut. Hibachi sirloin steak is also my go to when I go to my local hibachi place.
 
Longhorn and Texas road house.OK stops on long cross countries.
 
Hit our miss with most. I've had a few great steaks at Longhorn, Texas Roadhouse, and Saltgrass. I've mostly had decent steaks, but nothing extraordinary. Ruth's Chris is definitely overpriced. I find it a lot easier to get a good steak in the central US than on the coasts. I don't know if that's a cattle sourcing problem or what.
 
An 8oz ribeye, with the proper marbling, is just hard to mess up. I've had a decent one at any number of places. But, so far my favorite has been Chophouse 13,on San Jose Blvd in Jacksonville, Fl.
 
Out in Los Angeles, I like the Lawry's chain (Tam O'Shanter or Five Crowns In Newport Beach.) Their prime rib is excellent... but pricey, and i can do about as well at home.

Harris Ranch(3O8) has good steaks, but it's in the middle of a cattle field in Central California. I feel bad for the critters, but they're tasty.

Maybe blasphemous, but I don't like butter on my steak, which a lot of restaurants seem to like to do. I just want a good, seared steak that is medium rare. I can do just fine cooking my own steak via sous vide and grill or sear on cast iron to perfection.
 
rtk11 said:
Out in Los Angeles, I like the Lawry's chain (Tam O'Shanter or Five Crowns In Newport Beach.) Their prime rib is excellent... but pricey, and i can do about as well at home.

Harris Ranch(3O8) has good steaks, but it's in the middle of a cattle field in Central California. I feel bad for the critters, but they're tasty.

Maybe blasphemous, but I don't like butter on my steak, which a lot of restaurants seem to like to do. I just want a good, seared steak that is medium rare. I can do just fine cooking my own steak via sous vide and grill or sear on cast iron to perfection.
Click to expand...

I used to live down the road from Harris Ranch. Nice little runway right next to it. I never ate there. There was so much excellent and inexpensive food in the San Joquin valley, it just didn't make sense to spend that much money on a piece of feed lot beef.
 
Since I can’t get a good steak on the road anyway, I went for Outback because I never got food poisoning there. :oops:
 
As far as chain places go, Texas Roadhouse is my go to. At worst it isn't bad, and I've actually had some really decent steaks from there. Price isn't all that bad either.

That being said, there are some small local steakplaces here that can't be beat. I can't come close to what they can do with a steak. But at their price point, its a special occasion only type of thing.
 
Texas Land and Cattle is my favorite, but you won’t find them outside of Texas very often.
 
Brazilian style steakhouses seems to be the best deal .. no need to order anything specific, you get to try pretty much everything.
 
Warmi said:
Brazilian style steakhouses seems to be the best deal .. no need to order anything specific, you get to try pretty much everything.
Click to expand...

If you like value, yes. If you like steak, no.
 
deonb said:
If you like value, yes. If you like steak, no.
Click to expand...

At $60 per person ( at least in Chicago ) is not exactly a value oriented place - I like it because I like their food which to me is better than most “traditional” steakhouses.
 
Our local Mexican Restaurant cooks a fine ribeye in a cast iron skillet smothered in peppers & onions. We've got O'Charleys, Longhorn, Texas Roadhouse, etc but none of their steaks really compare. A lot has to be said about who's doing the cookin' in the kitchen.

You can waste good money if you dare try a Ruby Tuesday's, Applebee's, or Shoney's for a steak :eek:
 
Ryanb said:
What restaurant chain do y’all think has the best steak? I’m usually not a fan of restaurant steak, as they all taste alike, and the higher end joints like Ruth’s Chris are just waaay overpriced. I went to LongHorn the other night and was thoroughly impressed with their 8oz Renegade steak. Had it cooked medium-well and it was excellent. Outback, Texas Roadhouse, and most other common chains aren’t anything special imo. The best steak is cooked at home on the grill, but when it comes to restaurant steaks, where do you go?
Click to expand...

The best steaks you can get come from Kuroge Washu. Especially Miyazaki and Sanuki. Think Kobe, but better.

They are definitely worth the premium. Taste absolutely nothing like other steak.

However, no steakhouse chain that I know off serves those - I always found them in local one-off steakhouses. So to try and find a good "chain" may be a bit of dead end.
 
Warmi said:
At $60 per person ( at least in Chicago ) is not exactly a value oriented place - I like it because I like their food which to me is better than most “traditional” steakhouses.
Click to expand...

Custom cooked or off the sword? If it's custom cooked then sure. Off the sword you inevitably get overdone steak. It's a gimmick.
 
simtech said:
Medium well? No wonder you don't like restaurant steak. Should be medium or medium rare.
Click to expand...

Only fatty steaks like ribeye or well marbled Wagyu should be medium rare. Lean steaks like filet or sirloin are actually even better as rare/blue.

The cow did a great job on the meat - it doesn't require cooking. Fat on the other hand needs a bit of help.
 
I'm not overly fond of any of the chain steakhouses. The ones that have decent meat are usually insanely overpriced (Mortons and the like). There are some pretty good local ones around the country.

The place I was immensely disappointed with was my trip to Nebraska (Omaha, Grand Island, etc...). Having lived in Denver and traveling to Dallas a lot on business, I just assumed you could find good steaks in what I considered cattle country. Not so Nebraska. I never had a decent steak while I was there. The one place that had acceptable meat, fouled it up with terrible preparation.

Since lockdown, I've been picking up USDA Prime cuts at Costco which aren't too unreasonably priced (though the quality of the butchering is bizarre). One of my neighbors got me hooked on sous vide preparation, easy peasy. Take your meat, sprinkle a little salt and pepper (or if you're lazy, McCormick Montreal Steak Seasoning) and add the meat and a little olive oil to a zip lock bag and into the sous vide bath. I had experimented with various herb additions, but decided they really didn't do much. Throw it in the sous vide bath for about an hour or so and you get something uniformly medium rare throughout. It's at this point I prepare a big salad and Margy usually has her homemade bread ready and goes and cuts fresh chives from the garden. I throw two baked potatoes in the Advantium (what I called the EZ Bake oven, the potatoes are done in 11 minutes). Get a cast iron skillet hot and add olive oil and butter (oddly, I've tried both individually and they do not work as well). Using tongs, sear the meat on the top and bottom and edges.

The nice thing about sous vide is other than the light surface char from the finishing, everything else is uniformly at the 130 degree temperature. This is rare enough for my purposes. A lot of people order things rare because by the you get a char with regular preparation, you've over cooked the middle of all but the thickest cuts, and even those have a good amount of overdone meat.

Mine is a Joule unit (about $120 off Amazon if I recall properly).
 
Manny’s in Winter Haven, FL. The NY strip is outstanding.

Of the chains, Saltgrass is decent. Better than Outback and Longhorns, IMHO.
 
Texas Land and Cattle or Salt Grass for that restaurant tier.

If you're gonna shell out some bucks (in order), Smith and Wollensky's, Capital Grille, Papa's Steakhouse, Ruth's Chris.

[funny story: I used to not like Ruth's Chris because I eat slowly and the sizzling plate made it over cooked by the time I was done. After years someone said, "Ask them not to heat the plate." Duh!]
 
Outback is pretty good, but I usually get a Prime Rib there, which, technically, isn't a steak. I'm not big on Italian but Macaroni Grill has a pretty good ribeye.

I saw a previous mention of Harris Ranch. I flew there a few years ago for a Purple Board meat up. I got a flank steak. Pretty good stuff.
 
Chains - meh.

Best restaurants I've been to are the handful of places in Texas, Colorado, and Illinois where you pick out your slab of beast and they cook it for you. Well seasoned, and just good.

We got a local group of restaurants (the Great American Restaurants) that do a pretty good job and are not unreasonable in price. Local business club does OK - a bit pricy but I have a discount that helps - the best one they had was an ancho-crusted filet, but that's now off the menu.
 
Shawn said:
I don't know how you screw up a steak but Denny's does a pretty good job at it.
Click to expand...

90% of the Denny's clientel have to run everything through a blender before they eat it anyway.
 
deonb said:
The best steaks you can get come from Kuroge Washu. Especially Miyazaki and Sanuki. Think Kobe, but better.

They are definitely worth the premium. Taste absolutely nothing like other steak.

However, no steakhouse chain that I know off serves those - I always found them in local one-off steakhouses. So to try and find a good "chain" may be a bit of dead end.
Click to expand...

I actually don't like Kobe beef. Too fatty for my taste.
 
wsuffa said:
Chains - meh.

Best restaurants I've been to are the handful of places in Texas, Colorado, and Illinois where you pick out your slab of beast and they cook it for you. Well seasoned, and just good.

We got a local group of restaurants (the Great American Restaurants) that do a pretty good job and are not unreasonable in price. Local business club does OK - a bit pricy but I have a discount that helps - the best one they had was an ancho-crusted filet, but that's now off the menu.
Click to expand...

Great American has some really good restaurants. For example, the Coastal Flats in Fairfax is perhaps one of the best run places I've ever seen and the food's good and not too dear. Unfortunately, it's not uniform across the chain. The Coastal Flats in Tysons Cener is not run nearly as well. And the Mike's down in Springfield is an unmitigated disaster. SweetWater is good, but a bit overpriced for what it is.

But the good news is their restaurant Artie's down on Fairfax Circle is pretty good and not badly priced.
 
Life and restaurants are a crap shoot. Went to Pine Club in Dayton OH, rated as one of top 3 in the US. First time was awesome, steak was cooked exactly as I requested, taste was wonderful (no condiments necessary) service was top notch.
Went back 6 months later, was sitting right under an air conditioning vent and steak became instantly cold and thoroughly unenjoyable.
Haven’t been back since. Go figure
BTW they do NOT accept credit cards


Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk
 
flyingron said:
Great American has some really good restaurants. For example, the Coastal Flats in Fairfax is perhaps one of the best run places I've ever seen and the food's good and not too dear. Unfortunately, it's not uniform across the chain. The Coastal Flats in Tysons Cener is not run nearly as well. And the Mike's down in Springfield is an unmitigated disaster. SweetWater is good, but a bit overpriced for what it is.

But the good news is their restaurant Artie's down on Fairfax Circle is pretty good and not badly priced.
Click to expand...
Artie's is good, used to be on a first name basis with the bartender. I'm a bit closer to Silverado (the original Fritzbee's) than I am to Sweetwater. But Sweetwater has outside dining. I just glad they now take "reservations" (really fancy "call ahead" but it works. I do love the Coastal Flats in Fairfax, and agree about the one at Tysons and about Mikes. Carlisle Grand is dependent on when you go, though if I go to that neighborhood I'm usually going to Guapos.
 
I've had a pretty good steak at legends, but with anywhere, and depending on the cook manning the grill, it's going to be a hit or miss.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top