Texas Roadhouse – $$
6095 Commerce Circle
Willoughby, OH 44094
440-833-0570

Last week with some friends I returned to a restaurant I had not visited in some time, the Texas Roadhouse in Willoughby.  Now the last time I was there I left feeling unimpressed, so I was hoping for a better experience this time around.  We arrived around 9:00 p.m. on a Saturday night, so expectiably there was a pretty good crowd.  However, we were seated immediately in a booth near the center of the restaurant.

For an appetizer we ordered the cheese fries with ranch dipping sauce.  They came out not long after we ordered and they were perfect.  Nice crispy french fries covered with real melted cheese, not that liquid cheese garbage that most places use.  We started off hot, but it was all down hill from there. I ordered the chicken strips platter with green beans and fries for my dinner.  Now let me take a moment to address the question you are probably asking, "How can you order chicken at a steak place?  Are you a moron?"  I order chicken at a steak place because I hate ordering steak in restaurants, I absolutely hate it.  You end up having to play the doneness game with the kitchen.  Restaurants, for whatever reason, always overcook steak, so in order to get the doneness you actually want, you have to order it a step or two down.  For example, if you want medium, you have to order medium rare or rare to ensure that by the time that piece of meat gets to the table its still a little pink in the middle.  But then what happens if they actually cook it to the level you ordered?  Now your stuck with an expensive chunk of cow flesh that you consider under cooked.  And you wouldn’t dare send it back to spit-city to be further cooked (I’m not implying that the Texas Road House does this).  So I’m just gonna stick with the chicken and maybe pork.

As I mentioned before my litte ditty on steak doneness, I ordered the chicken fingers platter with green beans.  This dish was pretty easy to sum up, absolutely terrible.  The chicken fingers were bland and chewy, the fact they were warm was about the only thing that made them edible.  And don’t get me started on the green beans or should I say bean soup?  What I got served was a nice little bowl of green juice with a few beans on the bottom.  Its called a slotted spoon folks.  I could have been saved a lot of time if the kitchen would have been nice enough to put a little bean life-vest on each one.  That way, instead of having to go deep-bean-sea diving for every bean I could have just plucked them off the top of the water like the Coast Guard.  Thanks for nothing kitchen guys.

(These are the famed chicken fingers, aren’t cell phone cameras great?)

I’ve been to the Texas Roadhouse twice now and both times I’ve been disappointed.  Well, you shall not disappoint me any longer Texas Roadhouse, for I am through with you.