Virginia Steakhouses | SteakMap

The Best Steakhouses in Virginia

Virginia has 52 steakhouses across 30 cities and towns, and the map is lopsided in a way that says everything about the modern state. McLean, a suburb of about 50,000 people, has five. Richmond, the state capital, has one — and it is a national chain. The explanation is below.

Virginia also happens to be where American beef begins, which is not a figure of speech.

The Virginia Ten

1. Aberdeen Barn (Charlottesville) — family-owned since 1965, founded by George Spathos, who arrived from Greece at eighteen wanting to build the kind of steakhouse he had admired in New York. Certified Angus, aged, cooked over an open charcoal hearth, in a lantern-lit mahogany room hung with UVA memorabilia. His daughter Angela runs it now. Also in Virginia Beach and Williamsburg.
2. Opus 9 Steakhouse (Williamsburg) — the colonial capital’s serious room, and the best wine program in the Historic Triangle.
3. J. Gilbert’s Wood-Fired Steaks (McLean) — mesquite-fired beef and the most reliable table in the Beltway corridor.
4. American Prime (McLean) — the independent counterweight to a suburb otherwise full of brands.
5. 1799 Prime (Alexandria) — named for the year, in Old Town, and the most atmospheric steakhouse in Northern Virginia.
6. Oak Steakhouse (Alexandria) — the Indigo Road group’s Virginia room, running the same dry-aging program as its siblings in North Carolina, Georgia and Tennessee.
7. Frankie Rowland’s (Roanoke) — downtown in a restored 1890s building, and the anchor of southwest Virginia, with a second room in Salem.
8. Byrd & Baldwin Bros. (Norfolk) — in a 1906 downtown building, and the best steak in Hampton Roads.
9. Red Salt Chophouse (Henrico) — the room greater Richmond actually books, which is telling given what the city itself offers.
10. Noble Argentinian Steakhouse (Charlottesville) — open fire and chimichurri in the Blue Ridge foothills.

American beef arrived here, on 10 May 1611

This directory has followed the American beef trade across four states. It starts in this one.

Jamestown spent its first four years failing to feed itself. Then on 10 May 1611, Sir Thomas Dale landed with three ships carrying men and, in the language of the record, “100 kine and 200 swine.” That August Sir Thomas Gates followed with six more ships and another hundred head of cattle. Historians generally mark 1611 as the year real farming began at Jamestown — the colonists at Jamestown and Fort Algernon were assigned under Dale to raise livestock rather than hunt for gold.

Everything downstream of that is in this directory. Those herds moved north and west, and by 1742 Brighton, Massachusetts was holding the first meat auction in the colonies. By 1865 Chicago had industrialized the business. By 1910 the trade had reached Oklahoma City, where the last terminal market in America is still selling cattle every Monday morning. The whole chain runs back to two hundred animals walking off ships into a Virginia swamp.

The capital has one steakhouse. A suburb has five.

Richmond is the state capital, a city of 230,000, and it has exactly one steakhouse in this directory — a Fleming’s. Meanwhile McLean has five, Reston three, Tysons two, Alexandria two, Falls Church two, Arlington two, Ashburn two. Roughly nineteen of Virginia’s fifty-two steakhouses sit in the Washington suburbs, in a strip about twenty miles across.

That is not a coincidence of taste. Virginia has 25 companies on the Fortune 500. Eleven of them are headquartered in Fairfax County alone — more than any other locality in the state — and seven are inside Tysons Corner: Capital One, Freddie Mac, Booz Allen Hamilton, Northrop Grumman, Hilton, DXC and CSC. Add the federal contracting economy layered on top, and Northern Virginia becomes one of the densest concentrations of expense-account dining in the country.

It is the same pattern as Atlanta, only sharper, because here the corporate center and the political capital are a hundred miles apart. Steakhouse density tracks meetings and money, not population and not cattle — and Virginia is the cleanest proof of it on the whole site.

Around the state

The Washington suburbs carry the volume: GrillMarx and Trio Grill in Falls Church, Guerra in Arlington, DC Prime in Ashburn, Bourbon Boulevard in Chantilly, 1609 Prime in Dumfries, The West End out in Loudoun wine country, and Piedmont Steakhouse in Culpeper.

On the coast, Prime 54 and The Butcher’s Son serve Virginia Beach, with a second Butcher’s Son in Chesapeake, plus Schlesinger’s and Steak & Tonic in Newport News, River Stone Chophouse in Suffolk and Horn Harbor out on the Northern Neck.

Inland, Lynchburg carries three — William Henry, The Crown’s Ember and Fleming Mountain Grill — with Coach and Four in Roanoke, Council Oak down on the Tennessee line, Fahrenheit 132 and Durango Grill in Fredericksburg, Hondos in Glen Allen and The Lion’s Den 1837 out at Mineral.

The national chains

Given the above, the brand presence is exactly what you would predict. Ruth’s Chris runs six locations in Virginia — Tysons, Reston, Arlington, Fairfax, Midlothian and Virginia Beach — and Fleming’s two. Add Morton’s, The Palm, Eddie V’s, Eddie Merlot’s, Wildfire and Boston-founded Davio’s. Nearly all of it inside the same twenty miles.

Browse the state by city: McLean, Virginia Beach, Alexandria and Charlottesville.