Idaho Steakhouses | SteakMap

The Best Steakhouses in Idaho

Idaho has 15 steakhouses across 9 towns, with Boise holding 6 and the rest scattered from Coeur d’Alene in the panhandle to Menan out on the Snake River Plain. Only one national chain operates in the entire state.

It also grows the single most recognizable thing on an American steakhouse plate, and almost nobody connects the two.

The Idaho Ten

Beverly’s (Coeur d’Alene) — on the seventh floor of the Coeur d’Alene Resort, looking down the lake. The largest wine cellar in the Pacific Northwest: over 10,000 bottles and 1,500 labels, worth around two million dollars. AAA Four Diamond since 1989 and a multiple Wine Spectator Grand Award winner — the magazine’s top tier, held by only about a hundred restaurants on earth, and the same award carried by the Angus Barn in North Carolina. There are free cellar tours daily at 3:30.
Chandlers Prime Steaks (Boise) — the best steak in the capital, with live jazz most nights and a bar worth arriving early for.
Lock, Stock & Barrel (Boise) — an unmarked Boise institution since the 1970s, built on prime rib and the sort of room regulars do not want written about.
El Gaucho (Boise) — tableside carving and flambe carts, from the same small Pacific Northwest group that runs the Portland room.
Owyhee Tavern (Boise) — in the restored Owyhee building downtown, and the most handsome dining room in the city.
Stockman’s (Idaho Falls) — the eastern Idaho standard, named for the people who raise the cattle.
The Narrows Steakhouse (McCall) — on Payette Lake up in the mountains, and the reason to stay for dinner after a day on the water.
Turf Club (Twin Falls) — a long-running room in the Magic Valley, near the Snake River Canyon.
Cast Iron on 17th (Ammon) — cast-iron searing just outside Idaho Falls, and the newest serious cooking in the east of the state.
Teton House (Menan) — population under 800, out on the Snake River Plain under the Tetons. Exactly the kind of room this directory exists to find.

The baked potato on your plate is probably from here

Order a steak anywhere in America and you will be asked how you want the potato. It is the most universal side dish in the country, and it is not really a coincidence of taste — it is a supply chain, and it runs through southern Idaho.

Idaho grew 13.5 billion pounds of potatoes in 2024, which is about 32 percent of the entire United States crop — roughly one potato in three, from one state. And 70 percent of what Idaho grows is the Russet Burbank: the long, dry, thick-skinned variety that bakes fluffy instead of waxy, holds a split open, and takes butter without going to paste.

That is not an accident of marketing. The Russet Burbank is the baked potato, and the baked potato is the steakhouse side, and Idaho is where most of them come from. The volcanic soil, the altitude, the cold nights and the irrigation off the Snake River happen to suit it better than almost anywhere else on the continent.

So the fifteen steakhouses below sit in the middle of the thing the rest of the country orders without thinking about it. It is the only state in this directory with a legitimate claim to a side dish.

A Grand Award on a lake in the panhandle

Wine Spectator gives its Grand Award to roughly a hundred restaurants worldwide. One of them is in a resort town of 55,000 people in northern Idaho.

Beverly’s opened in 1986 on the seventh floor of the Coeur d’Alene Resort and has held AAA Four Diamond status since 1989. Its cellar is the largest in the Pacific Northwest — more than 10,000 bottles across 1,500 labels, an inventory worth about two million dollars, stacked floor to ceiling. Sommeliers run a free tour of it every evening at 3:30, tasting included, which is an unusually generous thing for a cellar of that size.

It is the kind of room you would expect in San Francisco or Chicago, and it is looking out over Lake Coeur d’Alene instead.