Texas Roadhouse Tips, Tricks, And Hacks Every Fan Should Know

Looking for delicious, yet affordable casual dining? We've got the restaurant hacks to make it happen. Texas Roadhouse is a stylish food chain that tends to stand out with its unique wood-and-brick architecture and bold neon lettering. At first glance, Texas Roadhouse is a fun Southern cuisine-inspired steak and barbecue joint with a straightforward menu and thematic interior decor, but it turns out there are more than a few options and avenues to explore in terms of deals, combos, requests, and menu replacements that customers can use to their advantage.

Some patrons will prefer to sit and order without strategizing — but for regulars, it's worth studying the various tips and tricks you can use to maximize your dining experience. Fortunately for readers, these restaurant menu hacks tend to go viral on social media, laying bare the satiating secrets of the whole Roadhouse franchise. So whether you're looking to dine at the restaurant with a large party or simply grab a quick to-go bag after a long day, here are some excellent tips, tricks, and hacks customers can rely on to get the most out of their Texas Roadhouse visits.

Texas Roadhouse is quite upfront about their dinner options. Case in point: When you walk in the door, you may notice a case full of juicy, fresh cuts of meat. But this is not just transparent decoration — customers are allowed to choose the steak they want from this display. To make this happen, talk with one of the servers near the front of the restaurant, or whoever is behind the steak counter. Let them know which particular steak you would like, and they'll give you a little slip of paper that looks like a raffle ticket. 

Once you're seated, and your server comes around, present them with the ticket so they can match it to the steak you picked. Whether you picked out a sirloin, prime rib, or filet, you get to enjoy the precise cut of meat you locked onto when you walked in the door.

Even those who don't normally go in for chili might want to give this one a try. Nearly all the steak from the restaurant is hand-cut. But what does that mean for the chili? Well, at Texas Roadhouse it means the beef in their chili comes directly from the trimmings off the steaks. Considering those trimmings come from quality cuts like sirloin and ribeye, your chili is packed with delicious, expensive ground beef at no more cost than what you might normally pay for a side of chili at a restaurant.

It's a deal that works in everyone's favor: The restaurant makes its chili using meat that would otherwise have gone to waste, and the customer ends up with chili that just might surprise some customers with how dang tasty it is.  

Texas Roadhouse has great options for families and other large parties in the form of their family packs. The menu offers eight family packs, each of which comes with a big salad, two 16 ounce sides, and a series of bread rolls.

The Family Value Chicken Critters meal comes with a whole lot of customizable dipping sauces and salad dressings, and even a large container of cinnamon butter for the bread rolls. Your family will enjoy a massive salad with elaborate fixings and a huge to-go compartment full of vibrant chicken fingers. There's a lot of food in this family pack meal. And the same is true for all the other family packs, which include cheeseburgers, beef tips, pulled pork, and other classic Texas options.

Lots of entrées at Texas Roadhouse come with sides, but did you know you can pull the ol' switcheroo? It's a neat trick they don't tell you about –and not all locations practice this, but it's worth a shot. When you order a meal, ask your server to swap whatever side it comes with for an appetizer of your choice.

Texas Roadhouse patrons may prefer to keep things simple and stick with the standard "Legendary Sides," which include things like salads, steamed broccoli, and sweet potatoes. But for those who want to maximize that menu, try exchanging a side for an appetizer like mozzarella sticks or fried pickles. Depending on the appetizer you choose, it may come at a half portion since the side it's replacing is likely smaller than the full-size appetizer. 

Dining out on a budget? Steak lovers who do their research can take advantage of the Early Dine menu, which is available Monday-Thursday from 3-6 p.m. For dedicated menu hackers, a little afternoon Texas Roadhouse action may land you in a quieter, more laid back restaurant environment with cheaper prices.

The main draw is that during Early Dine, a special collection of dishes from the Texas Roadhouse menu is available at $10.99 per entry. It's honestly a pretty solid deal, and it includes entrées like the 6 ounce sirloin steak, grilled barbecue chicken, pulled pork dinner, and a whole bunch of other tasty options. Some Roadhouse locations even include certain drinks in the discount pool, so keep an eye out for those if you give Early Dine a shot.

For some Texas Roadhouse fans, it's not even about the steak — because the moist, chewy bread rolls and sweet cinnamon butter are where it's at. Texas Roadhouse serves a couple baskets of bread rolls when you dine in, but if all you want is the rolls, there's a hack to get them on the cheap. So this may not work if you dine in at the restaurant, but if you order online, you can enjoy a dozen of those sweet, warm bread rolls all by themselves. This is an online deal only, and you have to know where to find it.

Here's how it works: Hit up the online menu for your local Texas Roadhouse location, and scroll until you see the section for sides and extras. At the bottom of the screen, you can see an option that says "Extra Fresh-Baked Bread." That's what you're looking for. Once you click that, you can get either half a dozen or a full dozen bread rolls, either of which comes bundled with Texas Roadhouse's famous cinnamon butter. The half dozen will run you $2.49, and the full dozen is $4.99, which is a killer deal in terms of both flavor and calories provided.

This one really is like an insider secret. If you order the Texas Roadhouse Cactus Blossom, you're in for a real treat. Possibly the restaurant's most famous appetizer, the Cactus Blossom is a huge golden-fried onion sliced into mouth-watering petals and arranged in picturesque floral form around a deep bowl of creamy Cajun dipping sauce. For some customers, this thing is a meal unto itself. But it also makes for a fun appetizer that parties can strip and share as they wait for their steak.

Here's the trick: Some Texas Roadhouse locations will allow you to add a little something on top for a charge — $8 for pulled pork, for instance. That little something can also be shrimp, fried catfish, or several other unorthodox, yet delicious toppings. The flavor meter just went from 10 to 11. That said, not every location will allow you to add toppings in this way, so always check with your server.

Some folks swing into their local Texas Roadhouse looking for a quick entrée and a nice salad on the side. But the entrées tend to be calorically dense, and then you're paying full price for a large meal with an accompanying salad. Fortunately, there's a convenient hack that will allow you to enjoy your salad on the cheap with just a small entrée for less cost. If you order off the kids menu, your entrée will come with the child version of your choice from Texas Roadhouse's many Legendary Sides, including things like mac and cheese and mashed potatoes.

However, a couple of those options are actually salads. Ordering off the kids menu will allow you to pick either a Caesar salad or a house salad for an additional $.79, which is quite a steal. There is one little trick you have to employ though, since many locations won't provide an adult with a meal from the kids menu. All you have to do is order your food as takeout from the online menu, and you can swing by Texas Roadhouse to pick it up in person once it's ready. Boom! Enjoy your affordable meal with an almost free salad.

Bacon doesn't typically come cheap. Unless you're at Texas Roadhouse, and you know about the $1 bacon bits hack. Your server may not let you in on this little secret, but luckily, the YouTube food reviewers behind "Hungry Vegas" got a hot tip from their waitress when they visited Texas Roadhouse.

If you're ordering a salad, be sure to ask your server about extra sides and toppings that you can stack onto the deal for a little extra cost. In this case, Hungry Vegas got a good-sized cup of fresh bacon bits for just $.99 to go with their fresh salad. And remember that Texas Roadhouse prides itself on its meaty entrées and sides, which means that depending on your location, your bacon bits may be freshly sizzled and chopped up, ready to spread across your salad (or whatever other entrée you might want to cover with it).

Texas Roadhouse offers plenty of tasty burgers at predictable restaurant prices, but sometimes that can still feel a bit pricey. If only there were a way to grab a burger while spending less. Well, this TikTok Texas Roadhouse server recommends burger lovers on a budget use the following menu hack to their advantage.

First, order the "Mini-Cheeseburgers" meal off the kids menu. If they don't allow you to do that, you may have to order it online and pick the meal up for takeout. That said, this cheeseburger meal comes with two sliders on Texas Roadhouse's freshly baked bread buns, plus your choice of side, free peanuts, four bread rolls with cinnamon butter, and a small soft drink. This whole meal comes at the surprisingly low price of $7.50 — not a bad hack for those looking to enjoy a meal for less money. 

Ordering an entire meal at Texas Roadhouse can feel kind of heavy when you peek at the receipt — even if you don't go in for special meal upgrades. It might seem counterintuitive, but if you're dining with a friend, those sidekick upgrades are actually one of the secrets to filling up without spending too much.

Here's how it works: First, you and your meal partner decide which entrée you'd like to split. Since each entrée comes with two sides, you can each pick one, and then ask the server for a series of side upgrades. For example, one of the classic Texas Roadhouse sides is a baked potato. But you could always upgrade that to a richer and more filling "loaded" baked potato with cheese, sour cream, and bacon bits. Upgrades like this will come at an extra charge, but since you're splitting a meal to begin with, it's still going to be way less than if you and your meal partner had each ordered a complete entrée with basic sides.

For those who value maximum freshness, here's a neat little trick you can use to guarantee your steak is fresh-cut. It will cost you extra, but some customers find it's worth the money. Most of the steaks at Texas Roadhouse are pre-cut that morning. These pre-cut steaks will come in a range of sizes, but if you want something bigger than the maximum size on offer, you can ask your server to upgrade to a bigger size.

According to one Texas Roadhouse guru on Reddit, if you want something bigger than, say, a 16 ounce ribeye, you can increase the size of your steak cut for an additional charge per ounce. The reason you might do this (aside from having a substantial appetite), is that because the larger size isn't among the pre-cut steaks for the day, the kitchen staff must make a fresh cut to meet the size you've requested. Therefore, your steak will be fresh-cut shortly before arriving at your table.

Our final Texas Roadhouse tip gets down to brass tacks: Getting more steak for less money. One option most customers will notice on the menu is the Dallas Filet. This classic steak entrée comes with either a 6 ounce or 8 ounce steak, plus the standard two sides. For the 6 ounce version, it will cost you about $25, and for the 8 ounce, you'll pay $30.

Now, there's nothing wrong with these deals, but the secret is that you can actually get around the system by ordering something called the Filet Medallions, which costs $25, just like the 6 ounce filet, and yet it provides a whole 9 ounce of meat. You can still order the two sides with the Filet Medallions meal — and just in case you needed one more reason to spring for it, this entrée is also served with plenty of seasoned rice.