Via iStockphoto / @acourtneyyy TikTok
A Texas Roadhouse customer says the chain’s famous rolls were unusually small, hard, and different enough that she thought they were frozen.
Texas Roadhouse bread rolls and the honey cinnamon butter they come with are so popular that there are hundreds of recipes online teaching people how to recreate them at home.
That sort of iconic status, though, also creates an expectation for the restaurant to always get it right when it comes to these rolls. According to one customer who recently visited the chain, however, the restaurant may have changed something significantly, and she’s not happy about it.
What’s Wrong With These Texas Roadhouse Bread Rolls?
In her clip, TikTok user @acourtneyyy holds a roll she got at a Texas Roadhouse location in College Station, Texas, indicating that the rolls look much smaller than usual.
“Texas Michelle Roadhouse,” she wrote in the video’s text overlay. “I KNOW you are not out here serving us the frozen rolls because WHAT IS THAT!?”
She added more context in the caption.
“My husband asked the waitress if they were the frozen ones and she went ‘uhm no they bake them fresh’,” she wrote. “Didn’t even taste the same.”
Her video got over 757,000 views.
According to Texas Roadhouse itself, the waitress was right. The chain says its bakers make the yeast rolls from scratch every day and bake fresh batches every five minutes before serving them with honey cinnamon butter.
Theories
Some viewers thought the rolls simply hadn’t been prepared correctly.
“I don’t work at Texas Roadhouse but I work at Logan’s roadhouse and I can 110% say we make our rolls fresh and if they’re crappy 99% of the time is cause they’re TOO fresh and haven’t had any time to proof,” one commenter wrote. “Here it just looks like they were a little under proofed and slightly overcooked.”
Another viewer blamed inconsistency between locations.
“It’s crazy how much the food quality varies between locations,” they wrote. “I always go to the same one, but was in a different area the other day when I decided to stop in for an early dinner. It was SO BAD. The rolls, the food, even the sides. Nothing was good.”
Meanwhile, one commenter didn’t see anything particularly unusual.
“Am I missing something they look like fairly normal rolls,” they wrote.
@acourtneyyy disagreed.
“Roadhouse rolls are normally fluffier and soft,” she responded. “These were literally like hockey pucks lol.”
What Could Have Gone Wrong?
If the bread rolls were tough and dense, the fact that they may have been frozen isn’t necessarily the cause. Frozen dough can still bake into airy, soft, and fluffy rolls.
Proofing time could explain it, however. Bread can turn out small and dense if the dough doesn’t proof long enough, since it doesn’t get enough time to rise properly. The yeast could’ve also been too weak, or the baker used too much flour.
It’s unclear exactly what happened here, though, and we don’t see the inside of the roll well enough to identify the exact issue.
@acourtneyyy My husband asked the waitress if they were the frozen ones and she went “👁️👄👁️..uhm no they bake them fresh”. Didn’t even taste the same 😩 #texasroadhouse #roadhouserolls #frozen #fresh
BroBible has reached out to Texas Roadhouse via email and @acourtneyyy via TikTok direct messages for comment.