— Becktons Chophouse & Tavern —
$17 / August 2023
Why exactly do we dine out?
For me, it’s a pretty short list of reasons, once you exclude sheer convenience; I’m either looking for a meal that I can’t or won’t make at home (at that moment), friends are around, or I just want to shake things up a bit. While this site is about “cheap eats,” I can’t say I’m ever driven by value per se. After all, it’s a pretty unusual place that can offer you breakfast, lunch or dinner for less money than you can pay to buy the ingredients and whip it up yourself.
I’m pretty sure I found one of these places, however. Now, you have to travel to Dickens, Texas (pop. 404), to find it, but Dickens isn’t thaaaat remote. Ok, I lie, it is, even if it sits on the main trunk road from Lubbock to Dallas/Ft. Worth. You may feel like you’re in Montana (just guessing, never been), but it’s not completely out of the realm of possibility that one day you might find yourself in Dickens. So, if you are that intrepid, purposeful or just plain lost, this post is for you.
Becktons Chophouse & Tavern if you blink, you’ll miss it, as the cliche goes, and that’d be a shame. It’s an older, somewhat loose-looking structure, but atmospherically so. It fits the landscape. The parking lot is tilted, set back a bit on a slight hill on the north side of Route 82 just before you get to crossroads that marks the heart of town. Of course, you won’t know you’ve been in the heart of Dickens until you are sailing out the other side of it. My point being, Becktons won’t find you, you have to find it.
When you do, admire the endless farmland view to the south; everything’s bigger in Texas, blah blah, but it’s kinda sorta true. Becktons has a dozen or so tables, and while it’s 30 miles from the next town of any size (relatively speaking), there was a steady stream of customers the Saturday afternoon I was there. Locals? At least some. Travelers? At least one.
Becktons is a steakhouse fever dream. You are in a very rural part of a very rural state. You may be starved, and the choices are few (Dickens is so removed, fast-food couldn’t be bothered to plant its flag). And then you find this place. Quality. Quantity. And value. So, the food…You can do what I did, and, in the absence of refrigeration for the next 260 miles, go for the smallest steak, a sirloin, which, for $17, came with a sweet trip to the super-crisp salad bar. Normally I wouldn’t spend a sentence of our time on that, but this one is worth mentioning, again, within the context of it being part of your $17 sirloin-steak dining experience. You’ll find chopped eggs, plus, among other items, okra, seeds, cheese, carrots, croutons, red onions, tomatoes … and a tray of mixed greens without a shred of iceberg lettuce in sight. The steak is cooked out back, and it’s terrific. Start adding sauteed onions and mushrooms, and the price will mushroom right out of cheap-eats territory, but let’s not put too fine a point on it. The rolls and butter clearly took effort and taste like the restaurant cares. Asparagus found its way onto my plate. (The bread and vegetable — or potato — come along with the steak and salad bar, no upcharge.) You want to gild the lily? If they ship the $6 peach cobbler to Tennessee, I’m in.
On my way out the door, stuffed to the gills with four hours to make Dallas and the Turnpike Troubadours, Katie Harmon stopped by to say hello. Katie’s originally from Northeast Ohio but has spent years in the Lone Star State. She’s managing Becktons on behalf of a man who bought the restaurant under its former name from a retiring owner, for the sole reason that he likes mashed potatoes, and wanted to make sure he could get some whenever he was in the area.
I don’t have a photo of the mashed potatoes, but Katie had been eating them when I walked past her on the way to the salad bar, under a slew of steak tips, as I recall, in a bowl that could stunt-double for a bowling ball. I don’t know how much that choice would’ve cost, but I’m guessing it was cheap eats, under $20, and it would’ve been worth every penny, no matter what your reason was for coming to Becktons Chophouse & Tavern.