Rating the Oklahoma City Steakhouses

Who's better, who's best

I liken this to what was an occasional column of Steve Forbes in Forbes Magazine from the 1990s, "Restaurants: Go, Consider, Stop". When I was young reading or really skimming that piece I would always find it interesting even though I was very, very far away in age, money, and distance from visiting any of those places.

Steakhouses in Oklahoma are a slightly contentious topic as we are a major moon orbiting the beef solar system of the Midwest. Just as there are various oil boom eras in Oklahoma history (1920s, 1970s, 2000s) there are steakhouse eras overlapping them—funny how runaway money goes with runaway luxuries.

The particular steakhouses that people in Oklahoma and Oklahoma City specifically choose as their favorite have always seemed to me to have less to do with overall pure quality and more to do with the style and history they wish to affiliate with. This is a long way of saying I don’t think people are usually being honest with themselves and others about why they pick which they pick.¹ And I feared I too was a part of this self deception.

So way back in 2021 I set a late new year’s resolution to visit all the OKC steakhouses and make a formal process of review. I would eat approximately the same meal at each location and rate each component on a 5-point scale with the main entrée, the steak, rated on a 10-point scale.

It took me a lot longer than I expected, but I just now finished a little over 2 years later.

Filet is the Merlot of steak cuts, and apparently I’m part of the problem… I chose ribeye as the steak for comparison. The intention was to get the most similar cut available—typically a 14-16 oz boneless without elaborate aging or other attributes.

As for the other items, my standard as can be seen in the second chart below was to get an old fashioned to begin, signature appetizer(s) and sides, a glass of wine with the steak, and a dessert. I did not get a dessert at one restaurant, OpusOne, because I was very much done eating at that place—the rating reflects as much.

Toping the list is Mahogany², which is actually a local chain with locations in OKC, Tulsa, and Omaha, NE. This was a bit of a shock to me. I definitely would not have handicapped it as the likely winner. In fact I thought it might be at the low end of “Go”. Yet, it pulled ahead as the top contender in both the ribeye and overall categories. And it really wasn’t very close. Everything about it was fabulous.

At the other end of the scale was Cattlemen’s Steakhouse, which under its alternative name Cattlemen’s Cafe has been apparently inducted into the Steak House Hall of Fame?!? I’m sorry, but the only way I’m buying that is if it comes with the explicit caveat that it is in reference to a time long now past. Cattlemen’s has a great history, and that story should be remembered. But honestly I find it today to be a practical joke being played on people who don’t know better. Honestly a much better meal for the money can be had at Outback, LongHorn, and many other moderately-priced, chain steakhouses.

Some of these places have been in business for years if not decades. Some are brand new. Stock & Bond is in the later category. This gave it some grace. Otherwise, it would have fared even worse.

Bob’s Steak & Chop House was very newly opened as well when I visited it. I believe I gave it some due grace as well even though they come with a strong reputation from their long history in Texas.

Vast was an asterisk addition since it is steakhouse adjacent. But I found myself there during this stretch and figured I would give it the same treatment. I was pleasantly surprised by its results having gone in assuming they would be resting on their atmosphere laurels—top of Devon Tower.

Other surprises included Mickey Mantle’s. What was once a great, new classic steakhouse is today the first stop in a bachelor/bachelorette party night. The lights are too bright inside and the constant-upsell iPad menu felt like a bad video game. All that said, the ribeye was the second best of the lot—go figure!

Not too surprising but disappointing is The Ranch (OKC location). I have always thought it was a bit overrated, and that overall showed through. A visit to their much newer Norman location during this period but not included in the evaluation basically confirmed the same. Notice that here like with Mickey Mantle’s the steak was a big success. It was all the rest that held it back.

McClintock probably deserves another shot. I had eaten there previously, and while it wasn’t knock-your-socks-off, it was fairly good. Not so this time. However, they were clearly still reeling from Covid at the time I was there. I think the staff was all family including young-adult kids.

The last notable is how poorly the steak at Boulevard Steakhouse was. It was the polar opposite of the experiences at Mickey Mantle’s and The Ranch—at Boulevard everything else was fantastic.

I tracked prices even though these did not directly figure into the quality ratings. Because my evaluation period extended so far along this period of exceptionally high inflation, I have added inflation-adjusted prices for perhaps a better comparison.

There is certainly some hair splitting in these evaluations as well as a subjectiveness that potentially results in (slight?) inconsistency. You may also notice I am fairly forgiving—in only one case was an entrée or overall rating below the scale midpoint. I guess I’m grading on a curve. Regardless, I believe I stayed true enough to firmly stand behind the ordinal ranking.

[Updated: A friend caught my math error in the previous version—a tiebreaker wasn’t properly small enough to only impact tie scores. The tables below have been corrected from the original post. The only change in order came swapping overall ranks 9 and 10—Stock & Bond versus Mickey Mantle’s.]

And here is the raw data. Notice that I am only including the items that I partook in despite the fact that I was never dining alone. I tried to not let the opinions of my companion weigh on my evaluation.

1. Paging Simler and Hanson.

2. The specific Mahogany is the location in downtown OKC.