Da Techguy's (no longer backup) Blog

Our family had planned a large combined birthday dinner for my wife and my Aunt (she turns 88 tomorrow) for Thursday but due to various sicknesses in the family we had to reschedule to tomorrow. So instead the 4 of us went to the newly opened Texas Road House in Leominster…

The first thing you note is the parking or lack thereof, however there is a Lowe’s right next door so I was able to use that lot without much trouble. As they have a call ahead seating system we had called to reserved a place and that decreased our wait considerably. Within 5 min we were lead toward a table, then to a different table and then finally to where they put us.

Then come the peanuts. If you have anything resembling a peanut allergy this is not the place for you as the dust alone will likely kill you dead. There are peanuts everywhere, every table, barrels of them and shells all over. All of them are in the shell so the villian’s warning from the movie Firewall doesn’t apply, well not much anyway. If you love peanuts this place is for you and they allow you a bag to take home.

The family loved the cinnamon butter but I found it too sweet for my taste, likewise the buns not bad but a little sweet. The salad was ok but nothing to write home about.

As far as the main entire the wife got the southern fried chicken with white gravy, the oldest the chicken fingers. They looked particularly good. The youngest got a burger and I got the medium sized 12 oz ribeye with fries. The fries were way too salty but the steak was acceptable but didn’t seem to have much flavor. The rest of the family very much enjoyed their meal.

As for ambiance they have a “birthday saddle” basically a child’s seat with a saddle on it where the person with a birthday sits on it they announce the birthday and has the restaurant give a YE-HAA. As my wife’s friend had taken her there Monday we skipped that as it gets old very quick.

Every 45 minutes the staff does a line dance, now I love to dance but I don’t do line dancing so I was able to fight the compulsion to join the dance, I was told by one of the staff they are required to do the dance if any customer requests it. All I had is visions of somebody with a cap gun saying “dance you varmints dance!” It seems very annoying for $2.63 an hour. Some of the staff really like the dance, others really don’t. As all are required to wear t-shirts that say “I love my job.” during the dance they could be sued for truth in advertising violations.

Our particular waitress was very attentive a fine job there; the bill was not outrageous but had to be corrected as we got two of they 7.99 specials that were not billed properly. It’s was a lot more than I’ve been spending since being laid off but it was the wife’s birthday.

So my review would end saying that Texas Road House is a chain restaurant like many others, not bad but nothing exciting. I think the quality is below Longhorn’s but the prices are lower too. It has it’s unique features and if you like them you will enjoy the place…

…that is that’s how the review would have ended if I hadn’t woken up at vomiting my heart out at 1 a.m., and then at 3 doing the same, and then at 5 and finally at 7 a.m. I couldn’t take food for the rest of the day ran a nasty fever and until yesterday afternoon the most solid thing I could keep down was a handful of dry cereal. I’m only this morning feeling like my old self.

There is nothing like bazooka barfing to lower your opinion of a place to eat. It might be a coincidence that this happened after eating there, the wife and kids loved the place, but after the 50 hours I just had you couldn’t drag me there again with a team of wild horses.

Update: My wife wants to make it clear that nobody else in the family got bazooka barfing or bad diarrhea (I didn’t mention that the first time) and that other than the cheesy fries (too salty) she looks forward to going there again as there are several other entires she wants to try. I say fine, that’s what girlfriends, sisters and sons are for.