iStockphoto / chapin31
A lot of couples hit retirement and play golf/tennis/pickleball or go on cruises. That’s boring. It’s a tired playbook that millions of American retirees have been doing forever. The couples who think outside the box like Mike and Judy McNamara are the couples I want to emulate one day as they are on a quest to visit every Texas Roadhouse in America.
Mike and Judy McNamara are recently retired and have chosen a life primarily on the road for the foreseeable future as they embark on their quest to eat at every Texas Roadhouse in the United States. They’ve already carved off a large chunk of the locations they need to visit as well.
Currently, there are 620 Texas Roadhouse locations in the United States. Unsurprisingly, Texas leads all states with 76 Texas Roadhouse locations according to hasdata which accounts for 12% of every Texas Roadhouse in the country. Florida, Ohio, and Pennsylvania rank 2nd, 3rd, and 4th respectively with 45, 37, and 36 steakhouse locations.
The McNamara’s have already eaten at a whopping 437 of the 620 Texas Roadhouse locations in the country on their quest to eat at every single steakhouse and honestly, when you break this down it’s a really cool goal.
Sure, this was probably borne out of their love the popular steakhouse chain but what it does is it gets this couple out across the country traveling coast to coast. With extremely spread out locations in Oregon, Idaho, Montana, Utah, Colorado, etc., they have a ton of traveling to do across the west.
The couple’s story was recently picked up by a bunch of regional news stations including WFLA after Mike and Judy McNamara hit 25 Texas Roadhouse locations on a recent road trip.
The couple from Virginia spoke about their love of Texas Roadhouse, saying “it’s good food. It’s more like home cooking to us. And as time has gone by, it’s not just the food. It’s also the people who work at the restaurants. They are a very big family of employees.”
When I first heard about this couple and their goal to visit every Texas Roadhouse my first thought was ‘what are they ordering?’ If they’ve eaten at 437 locations then surely they’ve unlocked the secrets of the menu by now.
Mike McNamara did shed some light on that. He said “we rotate around because of being there so often. But there’s a few things that we have not asked to try.”
I need to know what those things are. Immediately I went to the Texas Roadhouse Global Menu on their website and started to wager guesses at what they haven’t tried yet.
Boneless Buffalo Wings stood out as a potential item because some people are so adamantly against boneless wings but even the biggest of haters crave that buffalo sauce from time to time.
The entire salad menu seems like a blindspot in this challenge. If you are the type of person hellbent on eating at 620 Texas Roadhouse locations then chances are you’re not the type of person craving salads. There has to be *at least one* salad they haven’t tried yet.
Beyond that, who knows. I’d love to know but without them naming names there’s no way to know for sure what they haven’t eaten yet.
It has been a LONG time since I last ate at a Texas Roadhouse. My aunt used to hook it up with a gift card every year for the holidays but stopped at some point years ago. This couple’s quest to catch them all as if Texas Roadhouse restaurants were pokemon has me thinking I need to hit up Texas Roadhouse this week and see if it still has that sizzle. Will I be bringing my own scale to make sure my steak is the proper weight like this guy did? Only time will tell.