The Best Steakhouses in America

Steakhouses are definitively North American — the churrascarias of South America, while certainly steakhouses of a sort, are a thing apart, with a different kind of service, a different sensibility, different cuts of meat, etc. — and have long been among the most consistent and high-quality eating places in the U.S.

For scores of years in cities all around the country, dating back long before the culinary revolutions that brought imaginative America cuisine to the fore in the latter 20th century, they were often the best restaurants in town. You could be assured of comfortable surroundings, capable service (usually), a good martini, fresh salads, a choice of oysters, simple seafood if you wanted it, an array of steaks based on top-quality beef, lots of potato offerings and other side dishes, and almost always a wine list with good, food-appropriate choices.

Today, we have so many other kinds of places to eat that we might expect steakhouses to seem old-fashioned and to have been pushed to the margins of the food scene. However, the opposite is true. The data site IBISWorld reports that U.S. steakhouses recorded revenues of $7.9 billion between 2019 and mid-2024, up 3.6% (an increase that would surely have been higher had it not been for the pandemic). And celebrity chefs have gotten into the game, including Wolfgang Puck, José Andrés, Charlie Palmer, Bobby Flay, Michael Mina, and many more.

To assemble a list of the best steakhouses in America, 24/7 Tempo reviewed numerous local and regional dining and lifestyle sites and consulted listings by the Guide Michelin, The World’s Greatest Steakhouses, and other sources. Steakhouses are not ranked, but are listed alphabetically. (You’ll find many — but not all — of these places on our recent listing of the best steakhouse in every state.)

The truth is, though, that choosing just a small number of steakhouses out of the many in the U.S. — some estimates put the total number at almost 16,000 — is a particularly difficult task because there are so few examples that don’t merit recognition. Even the big chains — like Ruth’s Chris, Capital Grille, Morton’s, Smith & Wollensky, Fleming’s, The Palm — deliver terrific food at prices no higher than you’d pay at any other upscale restaurant. With a few exceptions, the places listed here, however, are independents or belong to small restaurant groups.

Angus Barn

• Location: Raleigh, North Carolina
• Sample menu items: North Carolina crab cakes, king-size beef ribs, espresso-rubbed filet mignon
• Interesting facts: Opened in 1960, destroyed by fire in 1964, rebuilt and reopened in 1965. One of America’s 50 highest-grossing independent restaurants.

Bazaar Meat

• Location: Chicago
• Sample menu items: Cinco Jotas jamón ibérico, roast suckling pig (advance notice), Kobe eye of the rib from Hyōgo Prefecture
• Interesting facts: Besides lots of steak, traditional and contemporary Spanish food from famed chef-humanitarian José Andrés.

Bern’s Steak House

• Location: Tampa, Florida
• Sample menu items: Roasted marrow bones with ramp salsa verde, Maine lobster bisque, 14-oz. 100-day-dry-aged Delmonico steak
• Interesting facts: Origins date from 1956. Legendary wine list, unique upstairs dessert room.

Buffalo Block Prime Steakhouse

• Location: Billings, Montana
• Sample menu items: Buffalo tenderloin carpaccio, flat-grilled salmon, prime dry-aged cowboy ribeye
• Interesting facts: Named for a kind of early 20th-century brick. Opened in 2018 on the site of the beloved local Rex Restaurant, which went out of business.

Carnevor

• Location: Milwaukee
• Sample menu items: Steak risotto with Wisconsin blue cheese, cider-braised chicken, Australian wagyu filet mignon
• Interesting facts: Dramatic wood-and-stone dining room. Sources pork and some beef from its restaurant group’s own farm.

Cattlemen’s Steakhouse

• Location: Oklahoma City
• Sample menu items: Steak and eggs (breakfast), lamb fries (testicles), T-bone steak
• Interesting facts: Launched as Cattlemen’s Café in OKC’s Stockyard City area in 1910. Said to have changed ownership in a dice game in 1945.

Cavalryman Steakhouse

• Location: Laramie, Wyoming
• Sample menu items: Bison meatballs, blue cheese wedge salad, bacon-wrapped tenderloin
• Interesting facts: Located in a 1925 building that used to be the clubhouse for an old golf course in historic Fort Sanders. Features grass-fed Wyoming-raised steaks on an alternating basis.

Chi Spacca

• Location: Los Angeles
• Sample menu items: Veal tongue with oregano vinaigrette, focaccia di Recco, bisecca fiorentina (50-oz. dry-aged bone-in porterhouse
• Interesting facts: Its name is Italian for “who cleaves” — in other words, a meat cleaver. The owner is famed restaurateur Nancy Silverton, whose acclaimed Osteria Mozza is just next door.

The Committee Chophouse

• Location: Omaha, Nebraska
• Sample menu items: Smoked pork belly, lobster mac, beef Wellington
• Interesting facts: Named for a group of executives from the Blackstone Hotel, where it was located (it’s now the Cottonwood Hotel), who used to meet on the site in the ’20s and ’30s to play poker and make, well, executive decisions.

The Continental

• Location: Naples, Florida
• Sample menu items: Sweet pea pancakes with crab and caviar, grilled octopus with chorizo and potato, Snake River Farms 12-oz. American gold wagyu N.Y. Strip
• Interesting facts: D’Amico and Partners, which runs numerous popular restaurants in both Naples and Minneapolis, opened this place in the former city’s upscale Third Street business district a decade ago.

Cote

• Location: New York City
• Sample menu items: Fermented soy stew, kimchi wagyu “paella,” 40-oz. Kagoshima Prefecture tenderloin
• Interesting facts: A Korean steakhouse, with numerous Korean dishes, six cuts of Japanese wagyu, and an excellent wine list. Has a Michelin star, and placed No. 4 on the recent World’s Best Steakhouse ratings, the highest-scoring such establishment in the U.S.

Cut by Wolfgang Puck

• Location: Beverly Hills, California
• Sample menu items: Dry-aged Flannery steak tartare, Santa Barbara uni toast, 50-oz. Australian wagyu tomahawk
• Interesting facts: This was the original location of famed chef Puck’s Cut restaurants — now also found in New York City, Las Vegas, Washington D.C., London, Singapore, and Bahrain — and remains arguably the most casually elegant.

Doe’s Eat Place

• Location: Greenville, Mississippi
• Sample menu items: Doe’s famous hot tamales, homemade spaghetti with meatballs, 10-oz. filet
• Interesting facts: Opened as a grocery store and honky-tonk in 1941. Has spawned numerous franchises around the South. On the National Registry of Historic Places.

George’s Steak Pit

• Location: Sheffield, Alabama
• Sample menu items: Oysters Rockefeller, Greek salad, George’s special 12-oz. ribeye
• Interesting facts: Founded in 1946. Grills seafood and steaks over hickory in an open fire pit.

John Howie Steak

• Location: Bellevue, Washington
• Sample menu items: Spicy habanero butter shrimp, sesame cauliflower steak, mesquite-grilled 24-oz. prime chateaubriand
• Interesting facts: Noted Seattle area chef-restaurateur Howie added this establishment to his portfolio in 2009. He is well-known as a philanthropist as well as a restaurant owner.

Keens Steakhouse

• Location: New York City
• Sample menu items: Littleneck clams on the half shell, steamed whole Maine lobster, “our legendary mutton chop”
• Interesting facts: An institution since 1885. Famed for its collection of clay pipes once used by celebrities including Babe Ruth, Teddy Roosevelt, Albert Einstein, and “Buffalo Bill” Cody.

Kevin Rathbun Steak

• Location: Atlanta
• Sample menu items: Yaya’s eggplant fries, Dutch Harbor king crab, steak frites
• Interesting facts: A sibling to James Beard Award-winning chef Kevin Rathbun’s acclaimed Rathbun restaurant. In business since 2007.

Killen’s Steakhouse

• Location: Pearland, Texas
• Sample menu items: Lobster bouillabaisse, quail adobo, filet flight (3-oz. portions of USDA prime and American, Australian, and Japanese wagyu)
• Interesting facts: Chef Ronnie Killen, whose first restaurant was Killen’s Kountry BBQ, opened this steakhouse in his hometown of Pearland, just south of Houston, in 2006.

London Chop House

• Location: Detroit
• Sample menu items: Smoked salmon toast, hamburger steak with foie gras, 14-oz. 28-day-dry-aged Creekstone Farms prime boneless ribeye
• Interesting facts: Opened in 1938, closed in 1991, reopened in 2012. Long known as the city’s most serious restaurant, compared to now-defunct places like Manhattan’s legendary “21” Club.

Murray’s

• Location: Minneapolis
• Sample menu items: Hickory-smoked shrimp, Red Lake walleye, “Silver Butter Knife Steak for Two”
• Interesting facts: Art and Marie Murray got into the restaurant business in 1933, eventually opening this place in 1946. Their grandchildren still run it.

Niku Steakhouse

• Location: San Francisco
• Sample menu items: Charred gem lettuce salad, crispy pig ears with chile de àrbol, Masami Ranch flat iron steak
• Interesting facts: A relative newcomer, dating only from 2019. Sometimes serves the rare Kagawa olive wagyu, from cattle fed on toasted olive pulp. Runs a butcher shop next door. Has a Michelin star.

Old Homestead Steakhouse

• Location: New York City
• Sample menu items: Roasted onion soup Gruyère, yellowtail tuna sashimi, prime porterhouse steak for two.
• Interesting facts: America’s oldest steakhouse (opened under another name in 1868), and probably the oldest continuously operating restaurant of any kind in the country.

Perini Ranch Steakhouse

• Location: Buffalo Gap, Texas
• Sample menu items: Fried quail legs, green chile hominy, mesquite-grilled 22-oz. bone-in prime ribeye
• Interesting facts: Founder Tom Perini was a chuckwagon cook before launching this steakhouse in an old hay barn on his ranch near Abilene in 1983. The specialty is “real Texas food.”

Porter House Bar & Grill

• Location: New York City
• Sample menu items: Salumi board, garganelli bolognese, chile-rubbed boneless prime ribeye
• Interesting facts: Since 2006, Michael Lomanaco — former chef at the “21” Club and the ill-fated Windows on the World — has served his food in this space overlooking Columbus Circle and Central Park.

RPM Steak

• Location: Chicago
• Sample menu items: Ember-roasted seafood tower, whole roasted Dover sole, Takamori “Drunken Wagyu” flat iron steak (fattened on rice from a sake brewery)
• Interesting facts: Part of the Lettuce Entertain You Enterprises empire, run by the Melman family — Chicago restaurant royalty. Sister restaurant to RPM Seafood and RPM Italian.

Ruth’s Chris Steak House

• Location: New Orleans
• Sample menu items: Goat cheese and artichoke dip, stuffed chicken breast, 16-oz. bone-in filet
• Interesting facts: The original of this now 150-plus-unit international chain. Single mom Ruth Fertel bought Chris Steak House in 1956, rebuilding it in a new location and adding her name after it burned down in a fire in 1976.

St. Elmo Steak House

• Location: Indianapolis
• Sample menu items: St. Elmo shrimp cocktail, chopped BLT salad, 18-oz. bone-in cowboy ribeye
• Interesting facts: Began life as a simple tavern in 1902. The signature dish is the shrimp cocktail; the restaurant is said to go through 48,600 pounds of shrimp a year.

Sperry’s Restaurant

• Location: Nashville, Tennessee
• Sample menu items: Mango- and sausage-stuffed mushrooms, BBQ shrimp and grits, 6-oz. Prince William blue-cheese-stuffed bacon-wrapped filet
• Interesting facts: In operation since 1974. The restaurant’s motto is “Connecting the dots between Old English heritage and the Old South.” There is another location in Cool Springs, about 125 miles to the west.

Stock Hill

• Location: Kansas City, Missouri
• Sample menu items: Caesar salad, grilled and lacquered redfish, 3-oz. A-5 Japanese Hokkaido wagyu
• Interesting facts: Opened in 2016 in the old Kansas City Board of Trade building. There is live music on weekends.

The Stockyards

• Location: Phoenix
• Sample menu items: Wild boar and venison sausages, grilled medallions of elk, “The Arizona Cut” 24-oz. bone-in ribeye
• Interesting facts: Originally a canteen for workers at what was once the world’s largest cattle feedlot. Converted to a restaurant by the founder’s family in 1947. (If you’re hungry for some seafood, here’s a list of the best seafood restaurant in every state.)