Texas Steakhouses | SteakMap

The Best Steakhouses in Texas

Texas has 207 steakhouses across 67 cities in this directory — second only to California — and it holds a record no other state comes close to: the longest dry-aged steak in America, at 240 days.

It is also the one state where the steakhouse sits on the actual cattle trail. Fort Worth still has its stockyards, and the restaurant at the center of them has been serving since 1947. This page ranks the best of it.

The SteakMap Ten: Texas's best, ranked

1. Knife Steakhouse — Plano. Chef John Tesar — Michelin-starred, James Beard-nominated, twice a Top Chef contestant — built a $50,000 dry-aging room and then used it harder than anyone in the country. Steaks are aged a minimum of 45 days and up to 240, and butchered on site. Nothing else in this directory comes close. The 240-day program gets its own section below.
2. Pappas Bros. Steakhouse — Dallas. USDA Prime dry-aged in house, and one of the great American wine programs by any measure: a list of more than 3,900 selections drawn from cellars holding over 30,000 bottles. The first Pappas Bros. opened on Houston's Westheimer Road in 1995.
3. Cattlemen's Steak House — Fort Worth. Opened by Jesse and Mozelle Roach in 1947, in the Fort Worth Stockyards, and still the most historically grounded steakhouse in the state: iron chandeliers, tooled leather booths, photographs of show cattle on the walls. In 2025 it was bought by Taylor Sheridan, the creator of Yellowstone, with partners — the previous owners staying on in part.
4. Killen's Steakhouse — Pearland. Ronnie Killen's room south of Houston, and the reason people drive out of the city for beef.
5. Georgia James — Houston. The modern end of Texas steak, and the most chef-driven room on this list.
6. Al Biernat's — Oak Lawn and North Dallas. The Dallas power-dinner standard for three decades.
7. Nick & Sam's — Dallas. Uptown, loud, and genuinely good — the other half of the Dallas steak conversation.
8. Vic & Anthony's — Houston. Downtown, near the ballpark, and the most classically chophouse room in the city.
9. Taste of Texas — Houston. A Houston institution with its own butcher case — you pick the cut before it is cooked.
10. Bob's Steak & Chop House — Fort Worth and six other Texas rooms. Texas-born and famous for a side dish: every steak arrives with an enormous glazed carrot on the plate. It should not work. It has outlasted most of its competition.

Also worth knowing: Perry's Steakhouse & Grille runs ten Texas rooms and is better known for a seven-finger-high pork chop than for any of its beef — a steakhouse signature that is not steak, which Texas seems to specialize in.

The longest dry-aged steak in America

Most steakhouses that dry-age stop between 28 and 45 days. A serious program might reach 60. Knife goes to 240.

That is eight months of a steak sitting in a controlled room losing water. By the end the ribeye has shed roughly a third of its weight to evaporation, which is the entire economic problem with dry-aging — you pay for beef you will never serve. What is left is far denser and more concentrated, and the signature white mold has grown completely around the outside.

The flavor stops being beefy in any ordinary sense. At 240 days Tesar describes it as sweet, with notes of popcorn, blue cheese and truffle. That is not a marketing flourish; it is what extreme age does to protein and fat.

It is a limited release and it is not always on. If you want to know what the far end of dry-aging actually tastes like, this is the only place in this directory that will show you.

The Stockyards

Fort Worth was a stop on the Chisholm Trail, and its stockyards are the reason the city exists in the form it does. Cattle were driven north through it, penned there, and shipped from there.

That history is not decorative. Cattlemen's opened in the middle of it in 1947, when the yards were still working, and it is still in the same place. Fort Worth holds 14 listings in this directory, more than any city its size in the country.

If you want the version of a Texas steakhouse that a Texan would recognize from childhood rather than from a magazine, this is the neighborhood.

How deep Texas ages its beef

• 45 to 240 days — Knife, Plano. The deepest program in the United States, and butchered on site.
• In-house, day count unpublished — Pappas Bros., on USDA Prime.

Browse every dry-aged steakhouse in Texas → · Browse wagyu in Texas →

Texas by city

The state splits cleanly. Dallas and Houston have 26 listings each and the deepest benches. Austin has 16 and the newest rooms. San Antonio and Fort Worth have 14 apiece, though they could not be less alike — San Antonio's are hotel and Riverwalk rooms, Fort Worth's are stockyard rooms. Plano has 10, including the best steak in the state.