Road Eats! - IV (Big Texan)

My theory when I started posting these little blurbs about restaurants was that I would do one really good restaurant (Good Eats!) and a matching average or dive place that I also liked for some reason (Road Eats!). As I start to make a list for myself though, I find I know a lot more dives than really good places. That's not too surprising since going to the good places is usually reserved for an anniversary or birthday, or some sort of special occasion.

Compounding this, I wanted to include hyperlinks to every place I named. This in turn cuts down on the dive places as, after all, how many of them are going to have web sites? So, neither group is getting as many examples as I wanted. Ah, well! What can you do?



Today I wanted to mention the Big Texan Steak Ranch in Amarillo, Texas. It's right on the northside frontage road along I-40 on the east end of town. If you've driven anywhere on the Interstates in Oklahoma, Texas, or New Mexico, and probably beyond, you seen signs encouraging you to stop there.

When we lived in Oklahoma City and when we drove to Denver we would pass through Amarillo. The first couple times we just kept going, thinking it was funny. But, eventually we had to stop in. It was all you could expect for road food.

It's quite a meat-heavy joint, not surprisingly. (It would make all of my co-workers from India faint.) Steak, and steak, and more steak.

The signature meal is the 72-oz. steak for $72. About 42,000 people have ordered it, and only 7,000 have finished it. They ask that you pay for this ahead of time, and then refund your money if you finish it.

They say the youngest person to ever finish eating the entire steak was an 11-yr. old boy. I think I know who this was! Clearly, this was Bobby Hill.