San Antonio Express-News (Sunday)
Battle of the Barns
Old-school steakhouses square off to answer the age-old question: Where’s the beef ?
It’s safe to say most of us who grew up in Texas had midpriced, family-friendly steakhouses where mom and dad took us. For me, it was Bonanza and Sizzler.
If you grew up in San Antonio, I’ll bet those places were The Barn Door and Little Red Barn Steak House.
The Barn Door came along in 1953, with Little Red Barn trailing along in 1963. Separated by 10 years and 10 miles from north to south, they nevertheless share the DNA of Western kitsch, painted red as mediumrare with a design aesthetic that embraces saddles, oil lamps, cattle brands and fringe.
Starting at $15 to $22 and topping out around $35 to $40 for a steak with a salad and a side, both places represent a strong mid-range value in the super-heated steak market.
Both places serve chicken-fried steak, pie a la mode, fried shrimp and margaritas for the grownups.
And both are locked in a fight for the best salad dressing and hot rolls in the city. In my book, any fight that results in the reascendance of Thousand Island dressing is a fight where everybody wins.
But today, only one of these steakhouse institutions will win.
In the same spirit of our previous throwdowns pitting Fred’s Fish Fry against Sea Island Shrimp House, Rudy’s against Bill Miller and Whataburger against Burger Boy, we present the Battle of the Barns: Barn Door versus Little Red Barn.
The Barn Door
With room after room of farm tools, barbed wire, iron skillets, saddle blankets and butcher scales, The Barn Door could be an auction house, an antiques shop or the next episode of a hoarders show. But it all feeds into the narrative of this as a steakhouse with a history, from its founding 69 years ago under the Tassos family to current owner Randy Stokes, who guided it through the pandemic and added a speakeasy bar in the back.
The food: I’ve loved sirloin since I was a kid for its lean, rangy character. Barn Door’s 12-ounce sirloin club steak delivered the juicy punch of a rib-eye with the leaner character of a New York Strip, striped with grill marks from charcoal and mesquite and seasoned with a perfect salt-and-pepper balance. A meticulous butcher’s trim
produced a 15-ounce rib-eye without the cut’s sometimes flamboyant fatty shag and with an ideal balance of fat and lean in every bite.
You could almost stop the conversation right there, in between bites of a cheesy twicebaked potato, pull-apart yeast rolls and a crisp iceberg salad with Thousand Island dressing so thick and sweet and sharp that it almost made me forget how much I loved the garlic punch of The Barn Door’s famous Green Goddess dressing. But The Barn Door wasn’t done.
Its chicken-fried steak ranks among the top five in the city, a rib-eye as wide as the plate, pounded tender with every square inch enshrouded in crispy golden batter and peppered cream gravy. Another dish, prosaically called “Chopped Sirloin With or Without Queso” on the menu, turned out to be a work of baconwrapped steakhouse art draped in Day-Glo orange cheese with a thick scatter of pico de gallo.
Ordered rare, it carried the taste and texture of steak tartare, formed with silky nuggets of beef instead of the smooth monotony of a uniform grind.
Strong sides and extras included stout mac and cheese crowned with toasted breadcrumbs, a dish of grilled asparagus with hollandaise sauce and fried shrimp so fresh and sweet that The Barn Door could’ve won the Fred’s Fish Fry battle.
The atmosphere: Despite the kountry-with-a-k collections all over the restaurant, The
Barn Door is clean and organized, and the crew still sanitizes every table like a biohazard team.
The intangibles: The Barn Door attracts customers up and down the economic ladder. But if you’re standing on the top rung of that ladder, you can reach for a $300 bottle of red wine, if that’s your thing. Or just get them to text you the secret password and hang out at the speakeasy all night.
Where to find them: 8400
N. New Braunfels Ave., 210-8240116, thebarndoorrestaurant.com
Little Red Barn Steak House
The outside of the Little Red Barn building used to proclaim “Over 1,000 Steaks a Day.” They’ve painted over that in favor of a more modern logo against a red backdrop with a Marlboro man silhouette, but not much else has changed in the 59 years since Ralph and Lili Hernandez opened the place.
The waitresses still dress like a high school drill team with fringed skirts and vests, the tables are still picnic tables and the walls are still painted with cattle brands from all over Texas and Mexico, and the kitchen still sears sirloins, rib-eyes and T-bones on a flat-top grill.
The food: Don’t look for fancy menus with catchy descriptions. At Little Red Barn, you order from a 4-foot-tall board they bring to the table printed with the name and the price. That’s it. You get a side and a little bowl of iceberg salad with housemade Thousand Island and Green Goddess dressings every bit as good as The Barn Door. Call that a tie, then pour it on thick.
Little Red Barn’s 10-ounce sirloin was a tight mahogany slab with an even sear and not much else, leaving most of the salting and peppering to the customer. Despite its lack of finesse, the steak glowed medium-rare as ordered, and the steel plate made a full meal with a foil-wrapped baked potato and sweet dinner rolls brought warm to the table.
The rowdy farmhouse vibe of the place was reflected in the 14-ounce rib-eye with uneven margins of fat on the outside, something that might have contributed to the meat’s strong iron taste, almost like liver.
Chicken-fried steak here was smaller than the plate-hogs we’ve grown used to, a sirloin pounded almost fork tender with a shaggy breading and a drape of country-style cream gravy that tasted like the best parts of what’s left behind in the frying pan.
They call their queso steak the Ringo here, a hamburgerpatty slab pressed flat and dry and dressed with sweet grilled onions and jalapeños, with a concise melt of cheddar on top. I’d call it a cheeseburger, and maybe it would have worked better with lettuce, tomatoes and a bun.
The atmosphere: As wide open and loud as a picnic at a family reunion for people who actually like each other, Little Red Barn doesn’t take itself too seriously.
The intangibles: They’re open for lunch, and the parking lot’s bigger than a minor league baseball park. Come to play.
Where to find them: 1836 S. Hackberry St., 210-532-4235, lrbsteakhouse.com
The winner
If steak’s the thing here — and it is — there’s no getting around the fact that a live-fire grill makes better steak than a fast-food flat top. And Barn Door’s queso steak is next-level West-Mex euphoria, in the same league as its open-range chicken-fried steak.
But both places made me feel the joy of community and good food. They’ve been around forever because they’ve earned it, and they’re ready to make another generation of family steakhouse memories.