Ruth’s Chris Steak House Vs Texas Roadhouse: Which Chain Is Better?

When you’re hungry for steak, but don’t feel like firing up the grill, you have plenty of options, depending on how much you want to spend, the ambiance you prefer, and the kind of dining experience that suits your mood. Among the big national chains, two options you might have considered are Ruth’s Chris Steak House and Texas Roadhouse.

Of course, the two are not directly comparable. Ruth’s Chris is a white-tablecloth restaurant with a well-earned reputation as an expense account splurge (though it started as a simple neighborhood steakhouse) while Texas Roadhouse is more of a casual, hanging-with-friends-and-family kind of place. But both pride themselves on the preparation of their steaks, as well as their generous assortment of libations and mouth-watering side dishes to complement their meals.

You can come away happy and full from a visit to either restaurant — as long as you know what to expect. So if you can’t decide which of these unique steakhouse experiences feels right, no worries. Through online reviews, social media, and online industry intelligence on both restaurants, I identified the unique strengths and weaknesses of each.

If you’ve always assumed that all steaks are pretty much the same, your first taste of USDA prime beef – young, tender beef with generous enough marbling to earn that designation – will be a revelation. It will have a rich, buttery mouthfeel and a tender texture (probably) unlike any supermarket steak you’ve grilled yourself. And there’s a good reason you may not have encountered prime meat previously – it’s a rare designation, given to only about 5% of beef produced in the United States, and restaurants and hotels generally buy most of the prime meat available.

But because of its relative scarcity and price, not all restaurants serve it. If you have a craving for prime steaks, however, Ruth’s Chris is among the relatively small number of restaurants that can satisfy it. All of the chain’s steaks are either prime or highly rated cuts of choice beef from animals that are first grass fed then finished with a corn diet, which is intended to lend a consistent flavor to all the chain’s meat. At Texas Roadhouse, on the other hand, all the steaks are USDA choice, the next grade down. Choice steaks are still quite tasty (they’re probably what you grill up at home), but you won’t get the unctuous mouthfeel and richness of a prime cut.

Even if you’re in the mood for steak, the people you’ll be dining with may not be. So to be a good host, you should be mindful of what else is on offer at the steakhouse of your choice. A place that only serves steak or treats its non-steak options as afterthoughts will not be a good option if you want your fellow diners to enjoy their meal as much as you do.

Both Ruth’s Chris and Texas Roadhouse offer a range of entrees other than steak. Each offers seafood, pork, and chicken options, along with hearty side dishes and main-dish salads that can easily be assembled into a satisfying meatless meal. If you know someone in your party is a huge fan of chicken, however, Texas Roadhouse is the clear winner – its menu offers six chicken options, ranging from fried tenders and smothered chicken to a simple herb-roasted chicken. In contrast, Ruth’s Chris offers a single chicken option, a herbed-cheese-stuffed roast chicken breast.

Ruth’s Chris is almost as proud of its origin story as it is of its steaks. The restaurant got its start in 1965, when New Orleans resident Ruth Fertel, a single mother looking to improve her career prospects and put her sons through college, mortgaged her house to buy a small restaurant. Despite having no professional food service experience, she turned the once-failing restaurant into a success. One regular loved her restaurant so much that after he moved away from New Orleans, he offered to open a franchise so he could continue to enjoy her cooking close to home — and thus launched a multinational empire.

Today, Ruth’s Chris has dozens of restaurants around the world and is under corporate ownership – it’s no longer even based in New Orleans. But traces of its Cajun roots still remain on its menu, which continues to feature recipes from Fertel’s family. Some of the restaurant’s current fan-favorite sides and desserts were originally created by Fertel’s uncle, a professional cook. So if you’ve ever enjoyed the crab cakes, bread pudding, or sweet potato casserole at Ruth’s Chris, you’ve experienced a bit of the restaurant’s history.

Fun fact: Texas Roadhouse was not, in fact, founded in Texas. Rather, founder Kent Taylor loved the idea of an affordable restaurant with Texas-style food and ambiance, and after he pursued and was turned down by more than 80 potential investors, he finally opened his first restaurant in Indiana in 1993. From the beginning, Taylor embraced the Texas vibe wholeheartedly: The Texas flag waves from the roofs of the restaurants, while the interiors have a rustic ranch house feel and feature décor such as stuffed armadillos and longhorn cattle skulls.

The menu too evokes the offerings from a ranch kitchen or chuck wagon. Appetizers include Texas favorites such as red chili, fried pickles, and rattlesnake bites (fried cheese balls with diced jalapeño bits). For entrees other than classic steaks, you can enjoy pulled pork, country-fried steak, smothered chicken, and slow-cooked ribs. The beverage offerings also seems designed to cool you off after a day of branding calves or mending fenceposts: Besides iced tea and soft drinks, you can enjoy iced margaritas in a variety of flavors, and draft beer served at a frosty 36 degrees Fahrenheit. So if the thought of all this is making you hungry, you know where to go.

You won’t find stuffed armadillos on display at Ruth’s Chris. In fact, you won’t find any unifying decorating theme at all if you visit more than one Ruth’s Chris restaurant. This is by design: The chain allows individual operators to design their interiors in whatever style best fits their location. But whatever décor an operator chooses must reflect a level of luxury and sophistication that matches the restaurant’s aged prime steaks. Restaurants include touches such as custom-made lighting and artwork, all designed to remind guests they’re not just eating, but dining.

The dressier interiors of Ruth’s Chris restaurants also mean the restaurant expects dressier guests. While the restaurant does not expect formal dress, you shouldn’t walk in straight from a day at the beach, either. The restaurant asks that guests not wear cutoffs, tank tops, or exposed underwear, remove hats while in the restaurant, and stick to the bar or patio areas if wearing sports jerseys or logo jackets. Individual restaurants, however, may set their own dress codes, so if you have questions, call before you go.

While Ruth’s Chris restaurants each have their own interior style and strive to fit harmoniously into their surrounding communities, Texas Roadhouse wears its Texas ranch image loud and proud. Indeed, it’s so proud of its Texas spirit it invites guests to take a bit of it home with them. Fans of the Texas Roadhouse experience can visit their online store, where they can find branded items ranging from plushies to socks to T-shirts to even scented candles meant to evoke everything Texas (the three scents on offer are Leather, Texas Sky, and Legendary Margarita).

If you’ve never been to Texas Roadhouse and you find all of this seriously weird, we can confirm that the restaurant does indeed have super fans eager to bring the Texas Roadhouse experience home with them. The honey cinnamon butter served with the restaurant’s rolls, for example, has inspired numerous copycat recipes online, some claiming to originate with former employees. And a TikTok video showing someone putting the butter and rolls in a wax-melting scent diffuser attracted more than 2 million views – and inspired Texas Roadhouse to start marketing its own honey-cinnamon butter wax melts.

A great steakhouse experience isn’t just about the steaks. No meal would be complete without an assortment of flavorful side dishes to offer a bit of flavor and color contrast to your feast. Depending on where you go, these can include anything from a simple baked potato or wedge salad to decadent lobster mac and cheese or dressy grilled asparagus. And of course, you should expect fun starters while you’re waiting for your steak and a choice of desserts to cap off your meal.

At Ruth’s Chris, some fans look forward to the sides and desserts as much as they do the steaks. Perhaps in response to customer requests, the restaurant now shares recipes for some favorite dishes with guests who request them. Ruth’s Chris offers recipes for its barbecued shrimp, bread pudding, creamed spinach, sweet potato casserole, crab cakes, and fresh mozzarella and Kumato tomato salad.

While Ruth’s Chris shares its recipes with home cooks who want to replicate their restaurant experience at home, Texas Roadhouse offers home cooks another option: They can buy the restaurants’ signature hand-cut steaks online to cook at home through the Texas Roadhouse Butcher Shop. Steak lovers can purchase vacuum-sealed packs of filets, New York strip steaks, ribeyes, bone-in ribeyes, filet medallions, or filet tips, which all come with a shaker of the chain’s proprietary steak seasoning. Serious carnivores can save 15% by subscribing to the butcher shop’s delivery service.

Selling steaks online wasn’t an original part of the Texas Roadhouse business plan. Rather, it was one of many pivots the restaurant made during the COVID pandemic, when indoor dining was no longer an option. To help keep the chain solvent, founder and CEO Kent Taylor gave up his own salary, and Texas Roadhouse restaurants switched their focus to takeout orders and later opened outdoor seating areas to offer safer dining. In addition to its regular menu, restaurants also offered to-go patrons raw steaks they could grill at home. The chain then expanded this idea into the online Texas Roadhouse Butcher Shop.

With its rustic décor, cheery country music, and menu of familiar favorites, Texas Roadhouse comes off as the kind of place kids would enjoy. It’s casual and laid-back enough that few people will likely notice or care if your kids start making faces at each other or kicking the table legs. And judging from the restaurant’s simple but varied kids’ menu – which features childhood favorites such as macaroni and cheese, hot dogs, and mini cheeseburgers, along with steak bites for the more intrepid — Texas Roadhouse management is ready for kids and expects them to show up.

While Ruth’s Chris also has a children’s menu, it offers slim pickings for picky young eaters — the Ruth’s Chris in Lafayette, Louisiana, for instance, offers only three, very basic choices (roast chicken, a 4-ounce filet, and broiled salmon). And the higher price point, stricter dress code, and more formal vibe of Ruth’s Chris doesn’t exactly scream kid-friendly. So unless you’ll be dining with the rare well-behaved child who enjoys dressing up for dinner and who will appreciate the meal as much as you do, Texas Roadhouse is a better choice for dining with little ones.

Ruth’s Chris not only offers a bigger variety of steaks, including T-bones and less-common specialty cuts such as tomahawk steaks and bone-in filets, but more elegant ways to enjoy them. All steaks arrive at the table finished with sizzling melted butter, and diners can opt to top their already rich steaks with a choice of sauces and garnishes, such as béarnaise or hollandaise sauce, a blue cheese crust, or Oscar (a decadent topping of crabmeat, asparagus, and béarnaise sauce).

If steak is just one of the possible main dish items you’re craving, you’ll have more non-steak options at Texas Roadhouse. Besides its signature steaks, you can choose from prime rib and several chicken dishes along with ribs, burgers, sandwiches, main-dish salads, and an assortment of seafood and pork preparations. As befits a steakhouse, Texas Roadhouse offers a range of steak cuts, from tender, dainty filets to hearty bone-in ribeyes, all simply grilled with your choice of sides or as part of a combo. If you want to add some oomph to your steak, you can ask for one of their optional toppings – sautéed mushrooms and onions, blue cheese crumbles, jack cheese, or three grilled shrimp.

The truth is that price is a major consideration (for most people) when choosing where to eat. A steakhouse meal is always a treat rather than a necessity, but how generously you want to treat yourself may depend on the occasion and your budget. Fortunately, solid steakhouse dinners can be found at a range of price points.

As a case in point, despite sharing many similar menu items, Ruth’s Chris and Texas Roadhouse have radically different price points. For instance, an 8-ounce filet at one Texas Roadhouse restaurant goes for $27.99. At Ruth’s Chris, you’ll pay almost twice as much for the same cut — $52.00. While much of this difference is due to the fact that Ruth’s Chris uses pricy and rare prime-grade meat rather than the more-common choice grade used by Texas Roadhouse, similar price differences hold for non-steak items as well: A Caesar salad at Texas Roadhouse costs $4.99, while a Caesar at Ruth’s Chris will set you back $14. So is the prospect of higher-quality meat and a more luxurious setting at Ruth’s Chris worth the price differential? Really, that’s for you to decide.

Both Texas Roadhouse and Ruth’s Chris take their steaks seriously. Texas Roadhouse uses only fresh, rather than frozen steaks, which are aged in house and hand trimmed. Once diners place their orders, the steaks get a generous sprinkling of the restaurant’s signature seasoning mix before a trained cook sears them quickly on a greased 500-degree Fahrenheit flattop, then transfers them to a gas grill to finish cooking and get their attractive grill lines. This will give diners tender, flavorful, and juicy steaks.

Ruth’s Chris also has its own proprietary method of steak preparation, and it involves some extreme temperatures. Instead of grilling its steaks, Ruth’s Chris uses special broilers designed by restaurant founder Ruth Fertel, which heat the steaks to a blazing 1800 degrees Fahrenheit (obviously, they don’t stay in there very long). Once a steak is cooked to a customer’s specifications, it’s placed on a serving plate heated to 500 degrees then finished with butter, which sizzles loudly as the steak is presented to the diner. All this heat is intended not only to keep steaks warm throughout the meal, but to offer guests a multi-sensory experience – they can see, hear, and smell their steaks as they’re brought to the table. So if you love your steaks hot — and appreciate a bit of tableside theater — Ruth’s Chris should be your steakhouse of choice.