We travel often, and most of the time, if we are stopping somewhere overnight, we are stopping late at night, and don’t need to get anything to eat. If we have stopped at a hotel at dinner time, we usually just order pizza, since it’s readily available wherever we stop and easy to eat.
On our recent trip down to Florida over Easter, we stopped a little earlier than we normally would have, since the plan was to head to Ft. Lauderdale – a longer way away than our usual trip. It was dinner time, and we had a pocket full of coupons for CiCi’s pizza, so we didn’t want to order pizza for this meal. Jim asked at the front desk for suggestions, and one of the brochures we were given was for JT Steaks – a steak dinner delivery service.
I want to start this review by saying the total bill came to less than $45. If we had gone to Outback – all 5 of us – the bill would have easily been closer to $100. The dinners we ordered were pretty complete meals – you got a green salad with your choice of dressing, the steak, a warm roll, and a baked potato. The brochure they gave us at the front desk had a coupon for 2 free sweet teas, so we had the two drinks included.
We ordered 3 steak dinners – a 12 ounce ribeye, and 2 six ounce ribeyes. The meals were delivered piping hot, and the steaks – ordered medium for the 12 ounce and one six ounce and medium well for the other six ounce – were cooked perfectly. The baked potatoes were steaming hot, wrapped in foil, and came with a generous supply of individually wrapped butter, margerine, and sour cream. There was also the individually packaged salad dressings – like you would get in the fast food restaurants, and steak sauce. We also ordered a skewer of shrimp, and 6 perfectly grilled medium sized shrimp accompanied our order.
The steaks were delicious! Well seasoned, cooked as ordered, tender and juicy. The only complaint I might have is that there was a little more gristle on the edges of the steak that you might not get at a nice, sit down restaurant, but it certainly wasn’t enough to detract from the taste. The potatoes were so good, definitely not tasting like microwaved baked potatoes, that even the little kids – who do not generally eat potatoes at home – were digging in to the butter topped fluffy goodness. The salads were generously portioned, and a nice complement to the steak dinner.
You can add grilled onions and mushrooms to any dish, and for those who are not steak lovers, they offer grilled shrimp and chicken in addition to several sandwiches. There is also a limited kids’ menu – burgers and chicken nuggets – but our kids are steak eaters, so there was no point ordering kids meals for them.
We were pleasantly surprised by the great meal we had from this restaurant. When we lived in Orlando many years ago, there was a Steak-Out franchise on the far side of the city that we often talked about trying some time, but we never did. I’m glad we got the opportunity to do it during this vacation, because I don’t think the Orlando franchise is there anymore. The meal was delivered in about an hour – just enough time for the girls to enjoy the pool and work up an appetite, and the delivery service was polite. This is definitely some place we would order from again.